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At one point or another, no matter what line of work you are in, you will be examined/monitored/tested by some sort of ruling body, government entity, or oversight committee.  Prior to joining the insurance and risk management industry, I held a variety of jobs that all had various types of checks and balances in place to make sure the job was done safely and/or hygienically.  When I was the foreman for a team of chairlift operators for two winters in Colorado, someone from the Colorado Passenger Tramway Safety Board would come to the mountain once or twice a season and inspect each lift for its structural and mechanical integrity as well as quiz the lift operator on duty about various emergency and operational procedures.  It was a given that the least capable member of the team that was on duty that day would conveniently go on lunch break about 10 minutes prior to when the Inspector was scheduled to arrive at the lift.  The inspectors travel the mountain on skis, so other lift ops are able to inform their coworkers of what type of questions are going to be asked as well as having real time knowledge of when the inspector will show up at a given lift station.  The lousy employee that was sent on break has the same amount of responsiblity on a day to day basis as his or her coworkers, but because of their ineptitude they were swept under the run when the inspector arrived.  The goal was to get a spotless inspection, so the senior members of the staff that had a better knowledge of procedures and the machinery would handle the face to face interactions with the inspectors.  Needless to say, the on/off ramps would be at a perfect angle with no icy areas, the lift shacks would be swept and the garbage emptied, and everyone would be dressed correctly in their uniforms.  Does this sound familiar?  Is this what happens before your job site or factory is inspected?  At least in the realm of ski mountain operations, we work safely most of the time.  However, there were times when we would climb on top of a spinning lift to clear snow instead of having it drip on to the guests, we would allow cold guests into our shacks to warm up if they were really cold, and we would smoke cigarettes behind the shack when no one was around.  All of these things were against the rules in the rulebook, but it was done when no one was looking.  What happens on your job site when no one is looking?  Are your guys working unsafely because it’s faster and they can go home earlier?  Do they show up hungover or still drunk because they know supervision will be light or non-existent that day?  The job of a construction company owner as well as the owner of a ski hill need to make safety part of the culture.  The mountain I worked at didn’t have that culture because clearing snow and getting people in their early 20s to show up for work at 5am on Saturday mornings to stand out in the cold for 8 hours were the priorities, and there wasn’t much time left for safety.  Some of my coworkers were extremely competent and just working for the free ski pass, others were incompetent, lazy, and had extreme substance abuse problems and were working there because they couldn’t find a job elsewhere.  Make safety part of your culture, don’t have a few people being the face of your company just for when OSHA comes by.

Below is the only safety video I saw for the two years I was the foreman on a ski lift crew. (I was in my early 20′s and didn’t know about the importance of safety.  Does this sound like any of your laborers?)  This is what happens if a safety brake fails, and the lift operator doesn’t engage the E-Brake in time.  This test was done at Winter Park Resort in Colorado when they decided to run some tests prior to retiring the lift.  If you’re ever on a chair lift that starts to spin backwards, jump off.  Seriously.