Practical Facilities Tips, News & Advice.
While forces affecting the workplace change rapidly—an aging workforce, new work arrangements, and state adoption of medical and recreational marijuana laws—regulatory changes move at a slower pace.
The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) says that approximately 20% of working adults use some sort of tobacco products, with almost 5% of these folks using two or more tobacco products “every day” or “some days.”
You may not think of carrying holiday dishes, decorations and gifts as “manual materials handling,” but that’s what it amounts to. The amount of lifting, carrying, hanging, and hauling that your workers do during the holidays may well exceed what they do at other times of the year. All that lifting and carrying puts them […]
34-year-old James Byrnes of North Beach, Maryland, was working from a ladder, hanging Christmas lights at his neighbor’s home in December 2013, when he came into contact with an overhead power line and was electrocuted. That same month, 13-year-old Georgia Marshall of Barry, South Wales, United Kingdom, was electrocuted while helping her father retrieve Christmas […]
By itself, winter carries a heightened risk of fire, because it involves more of the things that create warmth and light—fireplaces, space heaters, candles, cozy blankets. During the holidays, even more light, heat, and potentially flammable decorations are added to that mix.
While many workplaces have a come a long way in happier, healthier, more human designs, WELL is a newer performance-based system gaining popularity for taking the guesswork out of healthier spaces and uncovering common design pitfalls that may be disrupting sleep, slashing productivity, stunting cognitive functioning, and leaving employees isolated. While WELL provides a robust […]
Yesterday in our series on holiday hazards, we talked about the ways workers can hurt themselves when they’re trying to get at something that’s out of reach. But falls from elevations are not the only hazard workers face during the holidays; they may also be at increased risk from falls on the same level.
The mercury is falling in thermometers across the country, and people are starting to head indoors. This annual population shift is something for facility managers to take note of, as it comes with a dramatic uptick in communicable disease, including (and especially) Norovirus. While mistakenly referred to as the “stomach flu” it is a completely […]
Ah, the holidays! Twinkly lights, evergreen wreaths, chirpy music, family gatherings … and hazards that don’t apply to any other time of year. The Facilities Management Daily Advisor’s upcoming series on holiday hazards will help you remind your workers of the hazards their holiday activities can present, both in and out of the workplace. The best […]
The number of news items reporting on Legionella outbreaks has been growing at an alarming rate. Just yesterday, the Ford Motor Company reported that trace amounts of the bacteria were found in the water system at their flagship Rouge plant in Dearborn, Michigan. According to the report, the bacteria was discovered “in three locations across […]