Occupational Health Concerns: Realistic Work Safety Career Advice

Do you have occupational health or work safety concerns? Do you work in an unsafe workplace and wonder what to do about it? For this last post in our occupational health series, I’ll wear my employment lawyer* and career development facilitator hats.  Let’s look at your options with a realistic, practical eye.

Consider Your Options and Make a Good Decision

Start by using Career Key’s ACIP decision making process to resolve a work safety situation. You can download a free Decision Balance Sheet to complete.  The four steps will help you:

1. Make a list of alternatives and options;
2. Explore the consequences of each option;
3. Get more information about each option, and
4. Plan out how to follow through on your decision.

Options Might Include (likely more than one will apply):

A.  Trying to fix the unsafe situation yourself, if possible (and safe);

Example:

You work for a supervisor whose management style and actions are causing you a lot of stress, impacting your physical and mental health. Can you switch to a different boss and a different department within your employer, ideally before you get a negative performance evaluation? Don’t let a bad boss go on too long, otherwise the company won’t likely let you transfer.

B. Following a procedure in an employer’s employee handbook or policy guide for reporting an unsafe condition. There may be a “chain of command” you must follow. The question is whether this will help or hurt you.  Only you know the culture and personality of your workplace.

C. Finding another job first, then quit your current job. This means:

• Saving money to support you during possible unemployment;
• Networking as much as possible without jeopardizing your current job.
• Applying to and interviewing for other jobs before you leave your current job.

D. Filing a complaint with a city, state or federal agency, like OHSA or the EEOC (if your stress is being caused by a manager illegally discriminating against you.)

E. Pay for a one-time consultation with a plaintiff’s employment lawyer to find out what your options are and what, if any actions, they recommend. It might be the best $200 (or less) you ever spent – especially if you end up keeping unemployment benefits you might have otherwise lost by checking the wrong box on a form. Consulting a lawyer doesn’t mean you’re committing to sue someone.

Let’s look at a realistic scenario:

Your supervisor requires you to record your work hours for driving a truck in a way that you know breaks the law and could cause driver error.  (There are strict federal rules about truck driving with limits on how many hours drivers can be on duty) There is a lot of pressure to get more loads delivered with fewer drivers, making it impossible to be honest about work hours. Your employee handbook says to report the legal violation and unsafe condition directly to the HR department.  You know that if you do, your supervisor will likely retaliate against you – perhaps through a bad performance evaluation or an excuse to fire you.  And HR will likely do nothing about it – your boss and the HR Manger go to lunch together all the time. What do you do?

A complicated decision…

There are a lot of factors to consider, like your finances, family support (of you) and obligations, the current level of personal danger/risk, and how easily you can find another job elsewhere.  Even if you are illegally fired in retaliation for complaining of a safety violation, you still need a job and income while you are pursuing any legal claim.  This is why you must try to make Option C, preparing to leave your job, a viable option.

Sometimes leaving an employer makes legal claims less valuable to lawyers, even though it likely makes you healthier.  The reality is that quitting a job can reduce the value of an employment claim and get your unemployment benefits denied if your safety complaint is not believed.  And to recover large amounts of money from an employer, there must be big damages – large amounts of lost wages and trips to the doctor for emotional distress.

However, waiting for a bad employer to fire or lay you off has serious consequences too – tolls on your physical and mental health and on your family. It’s also harder to find a job if you’ve been fired or laid off. Lawsuits take a long time and are a gamble – juries are not always sympathetic.

Give up?

But does that mean you should give up – leave and let a bad employer hurt other people?  No.  It just means that you might wait until you are safely in another job to file a complaint against your old employer with a government agency, which is required to investigate.  Know what you’re getting into and prepare accordingly.

So if you were that truck driver, you would likely file a complaint with your state’s department of transportation or highway patrol. They enforce truck driving regulations and will audit companies suspected of violating the law.  The best thing about filing with a government agency is that is it free, and forces the employer to respond to the investigating agency.  It may not be quick or net you a big money payoff, but they put the employer on the spot. Responding to a government agency takes time, money and effort.

I hope this post hasn’t been too discouraging.   These decisions are hard, with no easy conclusions.  I hope you don’t encounter an unhealthy work environment but if you do, you will be able to leave it if you want to.

*You knew there would be a legal disclaimer, right? This blog is not individual legal advice and is general in nature. State laws differ. If you need legal advice, please go consult a lawyer in your area.

For my first two posts in the series see:

Career Choices and Occupational Health: Let’s Honor Workers Memorial Day

Occupational Health and Career Options: How to Learn More

After writing this post, I realized I wanted to say a lot more about self-preservation and being proactive in a volatile, unforgiving job market.  That will be up next....

Occupational Health and Career Options: How to Learn More

Some occupational hazards may be less obvious, like stress.

In choosing a career and comparing career options, don’t forget to include occupational health in your research along with salary, education, and job outlook. Stress, longer work hours, less job security, and a trend toward smaller employers make workplace safety and health more important than ever. This post lists top career information resources related to occupational health.

While some careers have obvious hazards (law enforcement, construction), other careers may be more hazardous than you realize. For example, chemical exposure is widespread from fire fighting, to cosmetology, to working as a scientist. Learning about workplace safety and health helps you make a more informed career decision. All jobs have hazards - it's just a matter of knowing what they are, assessing the risks and being prepared.

Part 2 of this occupational health blog series focuses on how people can find information about the safety and risks of different work environments. Try starting your research online and then follow up with occupational health-related questions during informational interviews.

Occupational Outlook Handbook (OOH)

When looking up a career in the OOH, make sure to click on the occupation's “Work Environment” tab.  Some occupations have a separate “injuries” description. Under “Contacts for More Information,” industry organizations are listed and may have occupational hazard information. If you are using the Career Key test to explore careers that match your interests and strongest Holland personality types, all its occupations link to and use the OOH for career information.

National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)

NIOSH is one of the best, most current online resources for occupational health.  There is a convenient list of Industries and Occupations, including special sections on Women and Young Worker Safety. Their most popular document is the free “Pocket Guide to Chemical Hazards”, which they hope to offer in a mobile form soon. It helps people recognize and control occupational chemical hazards.

NIOSH Science Blog

This blog is an excellent, up to date resource on a wide range of career fields like health care, nanotechnology, stress, green jobs, and sports and entertainment. The authors explain recent research in a layperson-friendly way.

U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration  (OSHA)

OSHA’s website has a helpful list of web-based e-tools and articles on common hazards, like bloodborne pathogens (for careers in dentistry, healthcare, emergency medicine, and adult care), green jobs, and computer workstations.

Also look at OSHA’s Safety and Health Topics.  You can do a keyword search or choose an industry or topic from a drop down menu (the easiest). For example, in 2010, nursing homes and residential care facilities had one of the highest rates of lost workdays due to injuries and illness of all major American industries. (Source: BLS).  OSHA’s nursing homes article has a list of Hazards and Solutions, with links to OHSA’s industry specific resources.

State OSHA Programs

For a more local approach to workplace safety, some states have an OSHA approved program. Here is an OSHA Program list by state. You can also do a online search for [your state] OSHA.  I’ve found that some of these state sites (I did not visit all of them) are more employer and/or enforcement focused instead of education for individuals. But your state may offer something helpful.

Other online resources:

Society for Human Resource Management: Safety and Security articles

YouTube, for specific government agencies, like the U.S. Department of Labor that has an OSHA playlist.

Informational Interview Questions

When you conduct information interviews as part of researching your career options, don’t forget to ask about their experience with occupational hazards.  Some people may not realize certain aspects of their work environment are “occupational hazards,” like stress or work schedules. So make sure to ask questions like, “What do you like least about your job?” or “How busy is your work schedule?”

Up next in this series final post:

Practical although imperfect answers to these career questions:

What should I do if I am working in an unsafe work environment or career?

How can I be proactive in protecting myself at work?

If you missed the first post: Career Choices and Occupational Health

A special thank you to Sheryl Eldridge, BBA, GCDF and others who recommended resources to me for this blog on the National Career Development Association LinkedIn Group.

Career Choices and Occupational Health: Let’s Honor Workers Memorial Day

In talking about career choices, we rarely mention occupational health hazards; but we should.  This weekend, April 28, is national Workers Memorial Day, honoring the lives of 13 Americans a day who are killed on the job.  All kinds of occupations involve fatalities: cashiers, farmers, workers in grain silos, a college football team student intern, healthcare workers infected by bloodborne pathogens.  And there are social justice impacts too: Hispanics suffer from a higher rate of work-related injuries than any other group. 

This blog starts a career planning series on workplace safety and health, and how to realistically assess our own risks in career decisions and the importance of staying mobile in the job market – a free agent – so you can leave an unsafe work environment.  This is true whether you have a stressful office job or work on an Alaskan crab boat.

Ultimately it is up to you to decide on your work environment and the occupational health hazards you can handle – with the option to leave an employer that is not taking your safety seriously.

I hope occupational health issues will become more visible in the career planning and counseling process. It is important that people have informed choices and develop job skills to gain as much job market mobility as possible.

At least two tragic reminders of workplace safety’s importance have occurred in the last week, the deadly Texas fertilizer plant explosion and just today, the factory collapse killing over 87 garment workers in Bangladesh. You might say, well, we have better standards in the U.S.

But do we really? Especially considering all the economic resources at our disposal? Failure of government enforcement (assisted by poor funding and special interest lobbies) and an insecure job market make a risky work environment. To give one example of poor performance, the ratio of OSHA inspectors has fallen over the past 30 years, with 2,200 inspectors for 8 million workplaces and 130 million workers.

While overall on the job fatalities in the U.S. have fallen since they were tracked starting in the early 1970s, there are still 13 people per day too many being killed and many more injured.  

My next post will focus on what individuals can do to find more occupation health information about a career option they are considering. In a later post, putting my employment lawyer hat on, I'll recommend realistic ways to deal with an unsafe working environment.

For more information:

Texas Explosion Seen as Sign of Weak U.S. Oversight

Bureau of Labor Statistics, Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries

Occupational Safety & Health Administration Common Statistics

It’s Official: Random Inspection Improve Workplace Safety, Science Magazine

National Action Summit on Health and Safety of Latino Workers, OSHA, 2010

Create a Green Career for Earth Day

All of us can celebrate Earth Day through our work, even if we do not have what's considered a "green career."  Whether you are choosing a new career or happy in your current job, you can make Earth Day more meaningful and make positive contributions to the environment at work.

Match Your Personality with Green Careers
Career Key has a great article on Green Careers that explains the role of careers in the green economy.  It includes lists of green jobs by the six Holland personality types (or Holland Codes) and Career Key work group. These lists match the results of Career Key's valid career test that measures these types and shows lists of matching occupations linked to helpful career information about each one.

Not Your Typical "Green Career"
But the Green Careers article also talks about ways we can contribute to environmental causes through careers not typically associated with being "green," like religious leaders and teachers.  Pope Francis recently declared protecting the environment as a focus in his new papacy.  Teachers can educate students in many ways about the environment that are relevant to their subject.

Being Greener in the Workplace
You know your workplace best.  Are there ways to decrease your carbon footprint that are not being used? Are there lessons learned or experiences from other similar employers that you could adopt?  Some may cost additional money but some may not. You'll never know unless you ask.

Another way to contribute is to join or start an environmental committee or program within a professional association. Be creative in coming up with a project or program that's relevant to your job.  Sometimes, as long as you volunteer to do the research and startup work, people are willing to follow your lead.

There are different views about climate change and people differ on how much they are willing to participate in environment-related efforts. But even making people aware of a more environmentally-friendly way to do something or serving as a (not too preachy) example can help.

What Career Key is Doing
For many years, Career Key has donated 10% of its website sales to charity. The Nature Conservancy and the World Wildlife Fund are two main beneficiaries because Career Key's author, Dr. Lawrence K. Jones and his wife Jeanine are interested in protecting nature and the environment.  Our server also runs on green, renewable energy.

To put a final, personal touch on this post, Dr. Jones emailed me last week to ask if I had signed up yet for Seattle City Light's Green Power Program. The Program allows customers to "Green Up" their electricity bill using Renewable Energy Credits. (like wind - we don't do much solar here in the Pacific NW for obvious reasons!) So I did - and soon this computer I'm using to write this blog will be 100% powered by wind or similar renewable resources.  There's nothing like pressure from your boss (and your father) to be green!

But I'm not perfect, like everyone else. Occasionally I use plastic sandwich bags for my son's lunch and no doubt other green faux pas I'm not even aware of.  But I make efforts to be environmentally conscious both at work and home, and that's good enough for me.

What do you do at work to be green - or to make your career green?

New Work Skills List Helps with Job Search and Career Choices

Putting yourself in the driver's seat with work skills....

Career Key's new "My Work Skills List" helps people with a job search, choosing a career, career change, and keeping up to date with a current career path.

This new, free, fill-in PDF is part of 7 Ways to Be Job and Work Skills Smart,  one of Career Key's most popular self-help articles on identifying skills.

When you fill out the list, you'll identify Foundation Skills you have and those you need to strengthen. You'll also learn about Motivated Skills and Dependable Strengths, those skills you enjoy using most and want to do more of in future jobs, career choices, and in your personal life.

The "fill in" capability of the form allows you to copy and paste lists of skills you find using the O*NET Code Connector. Just follow the directions in the "Make My Skills List" section of the article.

You'll be surprised at the quick payoff from doing this list, and the other activities recommended in 7 Ways to Be Job and Work Skills Smart.

Strengthening job skills is a critical part of our Free Agent Outlook on Work - putting you in the driver's seat, in control of your work life.  I know this is a less warm and fuzzy view of employers and the world of work, but we tend to be more realistic and entrepreneurial towards work and careers. Career Key author Dr. Jones's personal story shows why.  Voting with your feet, if at all possible, is a great option to have when working for someone else. In demand job skills make that possible.

Click on My Work Skills List to download the PDF directly.

Finally, we intend to release a new, related eBook on job skills later this year - so stay tuned or leave a comment that you want to be emailed when it comes out.

PRWeb has the latest press release about our new job and work skills article and My Work Skills List.

Love Can Make Your Career a Success

Larry and Jeanine, Naples, 1963

Falling in love with the right person can make your career and life a success.  Take my parents for example: Dr. Lawrence K. Jones (Larry), Career Key’s author and his wife Jeanine Wehr Jones.  In his words, Jeanine played a major role in his career, encouraging him to go to graduate school.  That decision led him to becoming a school counselor and then a professor in counseling education.

So Happy Valentines Day from Career Key!

If Larry hadn’t met Jeanine on the way to Turkey in 1963, Career Key probably wouldn’t be here.

Related:
"My Story," by Dr. Jones
Career Key's Mission

Our Free Agent Outlook on Work is greatly influenced by our belief in having a strong support system of family and friends to help us through the inevitable ups and downs of our work lives.

Make Liberal Arts A Successful College Major Choice

Forget the war on liberal arts! Liberal arts majors can make successful college majors. Follow the basic rules of a good career decision and plan ahead with these 10 actions:

1.  Know what liberal arts majors are, their benefits and challenges;  
2. Learn how you can benefit from Holland’s Theory, Holland’s college major environments, and the value of a close personality-major match. [Research shows it leads to success in college and greater career satisfaction];
3. Get a better sense of yourself, your interests and goals by doing the activities we recommend in “How to choose a career”;
4. Be job skills smart by filling in any gaps in your Foundation Skills during college;
5. Crossover to lesser known fields to develop skills and knowledge from business, finance, computer proficiency, and statistics.  You can do that through volunteer work, coursework, and internships.  No excuses anymore – MOOCs make it possible to take free classes on your own time without the penalty of poor grades on your transcript;
6. Combine an arts and humanities major with another more technical, career-oriented major that interests you in a growth industry like healthcare or information technology;
7. Use LinkedIn Alumni to help broaden your knowledge about what graduates with liberal arts majors are doing with their degree. I guarantee you'll get some ideas;
8. Decide on whether to go to graduate school with particular career goals in mind, based on real research based on informational interviews with current grad students and grad school grads, not hearsay.
9. Begin networking as soon as possible. Contrary to popular belief, you do not need to “be someone” to network. It is also not limited to job search – in fact, it’s better to network before you need a job. Bonus: you’ll simultaneously strengthen Foundation Skills.
10. Make sure you are taking advantage of all the career services and academic advising resources your college or university offers.  I see a few complaints about what schools don’t do to help graduates. But the reality is, many students don’t take advantage of available services, they let one dissatisfying experience stop their momentum, OR they don’t take the initiative. These things all happened to me at one time or another – but I didn’t let them stop me. Don’t let them stop you either.

You might also find helpful:

Download this PDF to see popular myths about liberal arts majors debunked, courtesy of Seattle Pacific University’s Career Center. It’s great advice.

30 Extremely Successful People with Liberal Arts Majors, from BusinessInsider.com

Why you should study art, or any soft major, from USAToday Education

Graduate School in the Humanities: Just don’t go, the Chronicle
"Not all College Degrees are Created Equal", PDF report from Georgetown University's Center on Education and the Workforce
Top-Paying Liberal Arts Majors in 2012, National Association of Colleges and Employers