The Office Safety and Health Program Read and study the "HR in Action Case Incident 1" found on pages 448-449. Please submit detailed answers to all four questions posed at the end of the case study and include specific examples to support your ansviers when possible. Be sure to reference lesson materials when appropriate. achinery, no high-pressure lines, no cutting or and certainly no forklift trucks. However, there HR IN ACTION CASE INCIDENT 1 The Office Safety and Health Program LearnInMotion is a dot-com firm that delivers employee training, both online and via delivery of CD/DVDs. At first glance, a dot-com is probably one of the last places you'd expect to find potential safety and health hazards-or so the owners, Jennifer and Mel, thought. There's no danger Ployee of moving machinery, no heavy lifting, and certain of as of accident-causing conditions, for instance. ne thing dot-com companies have is lots of cables the on safety and health problems. In terms of accident-causi CHAPTER 14 IMPROVINGO wires. Wix the comp WiFi not withsta computers to each ses separate cables withstanding, there are cables connecting each other and to the servers, and in many ables running from some computers to sepa- here are 10 wireless telephones in the office, ch are connected to 15-foot phone lines that ale printers the bases of whi ways seem to be When the installat electricity, high-speed and computers), they of cables of one sor in the walls or ceilin to be snaking around chairs and tables. installation specialists wired the office for gh-speed cable, phone lines, burglar alarms, rs), they estimated they used well over 5 miles one sort or another. Most of these are hidden Is or ceilings, but many of them snake their way desk, and under and over doorways. Several have tried to reduce the nuisance of having to trip um desk to desk, and under and on employees have tried over wires whenet ires whenever they get up by putting their plastic chair over the wires closest to them. However, that still leaves wires unprotected. In other cases, they brought in their own packing tape and tried to tape down the wires in those caces where they're particularly troublesome, such as across doorways. The cables and wires are only one of the more obvious potential accident-causing conditions. The firm's program- mer, before he left the firm, had tried to repair the main server while the unit was still electrically alive. To this day, they re not sure exactly where he stuck the screwdriver, but we result was that he was "blown across the room," as Mel puls it. Carpal tunnel syndrome is another risk, as are eye- Strain and strained backs. One recent accident uses independent co CD/DVD-based com delivery person ond Avenue and East cuck by a car. Luckily, he ecent accident particularly scared them. The firm pendent contractors to deliver the firm's book- and -based courses in New York and two other cities. A Person was riding his bike at the intersection of Sec- nd East 64th Street in New York when he was Luckily, he was not hurt, but the bike's front Wrecked, and the close call got Mel and about their lack of a safety program wheel was wreck thinking abou 449 ING OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY, HE HEALTH, AND RISK MANAGEMENT And it's not just the P some concerns about po stress and burnout. While safe with respect to phy conditions. They also have health problems such as job ne business may be (relatively) conditions, it is also relatively demands it makes in hours and or employees to get to work ning and to work through until stressful in terms of the demands deadlines. It is not at all at night. Just getting the company's new ser- operational required five of Learn In Motion's employees by 7:30 or 8:00 in the morning and to wo 11:00 or 12:00 at night. Just gert vice operational required to work 70-hour workweeks for three weeks. The bottom line is that both Jennifer and Me need to do something about imp d to do something about implementing a health and actually do it. safety plan. Now they want you to help them actually do it. Here's what they want you to do for them. he is that both Jennifer and Mel feel they Questions 14-16. Based on your knowledge of health and safety mat- ters and your actual observations of operations that are similar to ours, make a list of the potential hazardous conditions employees and others face at LearnInMotion. What should we do to reduce the potential severity of the top five hazards? 14-17. Would it be advisable for us to set up a procedure for screening out stress-prone or accident-prone individuals? Why? If so, how should we screen them? 14-18. Write a short position paper on what we should do to get all our employees to behave more safely at work. 14-19. Based on what you know and on what other dot- coms are doing, write a short position paper on what we can do to reduce the potential problems o stress and burnout in our company