In 2015, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) on-site consultation program helped 27,871 small and medium-sized businesses to identify and fix hazards. Most (87 percent) of the consultations took place at businesses with 100 or fewer employees, many of whom otherwise lacked the resources to employ their own on-site safety professional. More than 140,000 total hazards were addressed, and an estimated 3.5 million workers protected from possible injury, illness or death.
The consultation program is free to employers and separate from OSHA’s inspection efforts. Identified hazards are confidential and are not reported to OSHA inspection staff. Citations and penalties are not issued, though employers are obligated to correct serious safety and health hazards that are brought to their attention.
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Read more: Should You Use OSHA’s On-Site Consultation Program?
Your teenager just got his or her driver’s license and is begging you for a car. You’ve been thinking about buying a new one anyway, so you decide to give him your current ride. After all, an older vehicle should cost him less to insure as well as repair if he gets in an accident. Problem solved, right? Not so fast.
While hand-me-down cars can be money-savers, they also have potential drawbacks. One study conducted by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety found that 48 percent of drivers between the ages of 15 and 17 who died in crashes from 2008 to 2012 were in cars that were at least 11 years old. Before you gift an older car to your child, ask the following questions.
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Read more: Questions to Ask Before Passing a Car Down to Your Child
As defined by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), an active shooter is an individual who is actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a confined and populated area. From 2000 to 2013, 160 active shooter incidents occurred in the U.S. This was an average of 11.4 incidents annually, and 70 percent of the incidents occurred in a commercial, business or educational environment.
In most cases, an active shooter incident ends in five minutes or less—before law enforcement can even respond. This means if you want to protect your construction workers, you must train them to identify potential warning signs of violence, raise their concerns, and make life or death decisions quickly should an active shooter incident occur at your office or on a jobsite.
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Read more: Protecting Your Construction Workers from Active Shooter Events
Graying hair, shrinking bones and weakening muscles are all natural side effects of the aging process. But did you know that your fluid intelligence—or ability to reason, identify patterns and solve problems—also declines as you get older? It’s true, and according to experts at the Center for Decision Sciences at Columbia University, this makes it difficult for anyone over the age of 60 to make sound financial decisions.
That’s startling information, especially if you’re trying to care for an aging parent and are approaching retirement yourself. Fortunately, learning to identify the earliest signs of financial decline can help you recognize and manage the situation before it deteriorates further. These signs include slowness completing financial tasks (such as figuring the tip at a restaurant or writing a check at the pharmacy), missing important details in financial documents, and confusion about basic financial concepts.
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