Training Room 1

1. Training Room 1

HCS3010: Workplace Safety Practices

Training Room 1: Defining Workplace Safety Principles and Practices

Introduction

Training Room 1 is all about workplace hazards: recognizing hazards and putting controls in place to minimize the risk.

You may already have some understanding about safety at work, or workplace safety may be new for you. Either way, use these key questions to guide you as you explore this training room:

What is safety at work?
What does it mean for you, as a worker, to put safety into practice?

Now is a good time to review Course Checklist and to take a look at Training Room 1 Project. It is important that you know what you will need to do for the Project so that you can collect information as you work through Training Room 1.

There are some terms used in workplace safety that you need to be familiar with. These terms are accident, incident, and causation. Definitions for these terms are available in Glossary Terms. You can access Glossary Terms in the Toolkit at any time or by clicking the Glossary icon at the top of the page.

underlying factors in a chain of events that end in an accident or incident; also called root cause

an unexpected event that did not cause injury or damage this time but had the potential to do so

an unplanned event that interrupts the completion of an activity and that may include injury or property damage

What definitions of accident and incident can you find? You might want to ask friends, family, and co-workers; search the Internet; or use a dictionary to come up with your own understanding of the difference between accident and incident.

You might also want to read a debate about these terms in SafetyXchange, an online community for safety professionals. First, read the original blog post at SafetyXchange: “Accident Is the Proper Terminology.” Then read the discussion that followed at SafetyXchange: “Accident vs. Incident.”

Consider also the definition of causation, often called the root cause. Check out the information on causation given by the Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety (CCOHS) on its “Accident Investigation” webpage.