The summer season is fast approaching, which means millions of teenagers will be out of school and eagerly seeking out their first job. It’s great for workplaces to have all these fresh faces and all that youthful energy and ideas. However, with the pluses come the minuses that result from teens’ lack of work experience.
Incorporate the good without the bad by training your new teenage employees in all safety measures. To help you with this critical training, the American Society of Safety Engineers (ASSE), the National Institutes of Safety and Health (NIOSH), and the Oregon Occupational Safety and Health Administration ( Oregon OSHA) have teamed up to provide training resources. Visit www.asse.org/teensafety for training presentations, quizzes, handouts, etc., including an online interactive game called the Zombie Project www.asse.org/zombieproject.
Try a demo of BLR’s remarkable new Employee Training Center at no cost or obligation.
Oregon OSHA (http://www.orosha.org/pdf/pubs/s917.pdf) gives a good explanation of the risk factors for teen workers. These factors include:
- Lack of on-the-job experience, including knowing the risks associated with each job, including
- Physical hazards
- Biological hazards
- Chemical hazards
- Other hazards (noise, vibration, radiation, etc.)
- Feeling of invincibility that may lead to risk-taking
- Lack of awareness of their rights and responsibilities, as well as job tasks that are illegal for them to perform
- Trouble in relating cause and effect so that they don’t see how an injury today could disable them for life
- Desire to prove themselves that can lead them to do unsafe things
- Reluctance to ask questions
In addition to these factors, teens need to be trained on how to identify hazards because:
- They may think that their employers have protected them, so they don’t have personal responsibilities for staying safe.
- They may not know where to find safety information, such as for hazardous chemicals.
Adapt this valuable multistep process from Oregon OSHA to train your teen employees. Customize the following steps to your young workforce and your specific workplace:
- Give teens clear instructions on the safety precautions to take for each task.
- Ask teens to repeat your instructions and to ask questions whenever they don’t understand.
- Demonstrate—or have an older employee demonstrate—how to perform each task.
- Watch teens as they perform each task and correct mistakes until they get it right.
- Ask once more if they have any more questions.
- Check back later to ensure that they’re continuing to perform their tasks correctly and safely.
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Why It Matters
- In 1 recent year, about 2.3 million teens aged 15 to 17 worked in the United States.
- In that year, thousands of teens suffered on-the-job injuries serious enough to send them to the hospital. Most of these types of injuries occur within the first 12 months of employment.
- In that year, 34 youths under the age of 18 died from work-related injuries.