Happy New Year!
Welcome to the Special Safety Report with The Safety Chic. You are ready for 2020, right? Did you create a personal Safety Plan? Safety plan, you might ask. Yes, a personal safety plan is important because what gets planned, gets done.
So I will be sharing with you on how to up your 2020 safety game.
Assessment of 2019
If you have no idea of what has happened before, how will you know how to forge ahead intentionally? Take some time to assess if you had an injury in 2019, got involved in a “minor” safety incident say a knife cut in the kitchen or a major safety incident say your child fell from the stairs or you experienced a fire. Assess the location, was it at home or the workplace. Assess the actors involved, was it you, a child, a colleague, neighbour or a random person you heard about on the news. I believe you are recalling some incidents. What could you have done differently? How could better outcomes be achieved?
Get Safety Training
You must have noticed from the various scenarios that flashed through your mind that someone didn’t make the right decision because they didn’t know better. This is where safety training comes in. Do you need to know how to fight a fire if it starts in the kitchen? Do you need to know how to carry out a risk assessment in your workplace? Do you need to know how to set up a safety system in your school? Do you need to know how administer first aid? As a matter of fact, everyone needs to know how to administer basic first aid. We should no longer hear cases of people dying from choking or people dying because no one on the scene could do CPR. Therefore, add getting a relevant safety training to your 2020 plans. There are aspects I can train you on and there others where I’m happy to recommend other service providers to you.
Invest in serviceable safety equipment
Emphasis here is on serviceable. Many times people buy safety equipment without being conscious of expiration dates or if it’s working appropriately. This is a recipe for disaster if you find out the equipment doesn’t work on the day an emergency happens. Whenever we talk about safety equipment, the first thing that comes to mind to most people is a fire extinguisher. There are other safety equipment. What you will need is largely dependent on the risks you’re exposed to. Therefore, discuss with a safety professional.
Get involved in drills
What you practice gets internalized faster and you will remember in an emergency because you have interacted with the scenario. Recently, during a shooting scare in a foreign country, a girl was able to provide a safe place for her classmates. When her father was interviewed, he mentioned that the children seemed so organised that he thinks they must have done a lot of drills in their schools. Also, I have personally received testimonials from people who took part in practical sessions in our safety training who used their new knowledge to save the lives of complete strangers. Drills make you confident on how to act even in the face of danger.
Become a safety advocate
It is great to know how to act in an emergency but what happens if you are the only one with that knowledge and a safety incident occurs in your absence? The action or inaction of others can affect your own safety. Therefore, you have a role to share knowledge with others and correct them when you see them making an unsafe choice. Do not be afraid to be termed a “busybody” and you keep quiet when you see things going wrong. As you already know, evil thrives when good men and women keep silent
I hope this has been helpful to you? It is not a totally exhaustive list but with these few foundation tips, you would be able to build a great personal safety plan for 2020.
#TheSafetyChic
Intentionally grooming a safety conscious generation
