All posts by Jordan Bell

I once read an article about a boy who referred to himself as an expert juggler. And that got me thinking: What does one have to do exactly to be considered an expert at juggling? Soon after, I was reminded of the “10,000-hour theory,” created by K. Anders Ericsson – and made popular by Malcolm Gladwell and Geoffrey Colvin. If you're not familiar with this theory, it states that after 10,000 hours of practice at anything, you will have reached a level of expertise.

If you’ve tried to introduce a new piece of PPE to your workforce, you know how hard it is for humans to change their ways. I talk to a lot of safety managers to discuss ice cleats and traction aids for shoes and they all tell me some version of: “I know my guys. They’ll never bother to put them on.” But if you’re a safety professional who knows that wearing ice cleats will reduce the number of winter slip and fall injuries (and, in the process, increasing your company’s workers comp claims), then you owe it to your company, your work staff and yourself to find a way to introduce an ice tracti[…]

Far and away, the most common complaint we hear is that people hate taking their ice cleats on and off throughout the day, especially when they walk from outside to inside frequently. Who can blame them? Winter slips and falls on snow and ice are often the number one cause of recordable incidents. While ice cleats seem like an obvious solution to reduce accidents, there are two realities that complicate the issue:

If you are reading this blog, you are most likely a safety professional of some sort. That being the case, I ask you: What is your biggest safety sin or workplace hazard? To put it in perspective, I’ll tell you mine. But let me first give you some background. Winter Walking is North America’s largest manufacturer of traction aid ice cleats. We help hundreds of companies and thousands of employees reduce the chance of suffering a slip and fall injury while on the job. We take tremendous pride in our product line, our company and our task. So can you imagine how embarrassed I would be if I perso[…]

Last winter, I wrote a blog post entitled, “Why Are There No Regulations Around Ice Cleats?” It turned out to be one of my most popular blog entries, so I figured it was time to revisit the topic. In the original post, I wrote that the main reason for a lack of industry standards or regulations around ice cleats is the number of variables in recreating an outdoorslippery surface. But I don’t think that my post was popular because people wanted to hear why these regulations don’t exist. Instead, what safety professionals really want to know is what can they do in light of the lack of regulation[…]

Resistance to change is simply part of human nature. If you want to see that resistance in action, try introducing a new piece of PPE to an established workforce. I cannot tell you how many times I have heard the following response when discussing ice cleats with a safety manager: “It’s not even worth buying ice cleats this winter. I know my guys. They’ll never bother to put them on.”