Survey: Many companies won’t train student workers on safety
July 3, 2008 by Sam NarisiPosted in: Entry level recruiting, In This Week's E-Newsletter, Law
Now that summer’s here, many companies have student employees coming to work. But new research shows many firms aren’t doing enough to keep them safe.
According to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, about 70 teenagers die in work-related accidents a year, and 70,000 are injured badly enough to end up in the emergency room.
All in all, student workers are twice as likely as everyone else to be injured on the job.
Why? Lack of training might be one of the problems. Only 54% of companies say they train summer workers on safety, according to a recent survey by insurance company The Accident Fund.
Hopefully, the remaining 46% don’t hire students in jobs that pose any danger. But if they do, the statistics above are a good reminder to start some kind of training program.
July 11th, 2008 at 1:21 pm
Our moral compass should prevent this from happening. All it takes is looking a family member in the eye (even if it is just once) to tell them of an accident with their loved one (or worse a fatality – and then you deal with them at the funeral, during benefits discussions, helping assign life insurance, during lawsuits, etc) to show that training on the front end is worth it (and required by OSHA and MSHA).