The excuses for not adequately training new employees are plentiful.
“His past employment history was working with cranes.”
“We’re not going to spend time right now, he may not stick around.”
“We’re too busy right now so we leave it to the supervisor.”
They aren’t always completely honest about their past crane operation experience. They often rush and hurry to attempt to make a good impression. An example I witnessed was the decision to not stop and rehook the chains to balance a 20 ft. long load of bar stock. Instead the operator sat on one end of the load to balance the load as he rode down the crane bay!
New employees are sometimes used as fill ins for multiple locations in the plant. A recent example of the problem caused by this was a work cell where the normal operator knew exactly how to hook up the chains to turn a fabrication. An accident was caused by the load tipping back on the operator. A comment I heard was, “I guess we didn’t know there was a wrong way to do it.”
Some of the basic and most important parts of safe lifting training are not conveyed to the new employees:
- Don’t stop watching the load when operating controls.
- Never be under a suspended load!
- Know how much the load weighs.
- Only use rated components.
- Sharp edges are hazards to nylon slings.
- Hazards caused by using magnets on thin gauge material.
- Hooks are not attached properly.
- Twists in chains can cause overload.
- Angles of lifts can cause overload.
- Eye bolt and hoist ring misuse.
- Don’t use crane to pull slings out from under load.
Morale can suffer in a plant when long time employees see lifting gear that everyone shares being misused and damaged. It is common these days to have language barriers that keep employees from sharing and learning specifics on safe lifting practices.
