Safety Awareness Presentation

Mark Bell has amassed what might be the largest collection of ENG safety material in his years of research of ENG accidents. He is available to present his ENG Safety Awareness seminar at your station for the price of travel, lodging, and incidental expenses, added to the reasonable seminar rates. Total cost usually works out to under $4000.00, and is figured on a seminar time basis, not a per-person rate. The cost is frequently split by a few stations in the market who group together on the occasion for the sake of safety awareness. For scheduling convenience, more than one seminar can be conducted in a day. All levels of news and engineering employees should be invited, as the presentation has something of interest for all.
For convenience, or if necessary, a video/data projector and sound system can be brought to the presentation facility, with only the addition of chairs, a table, and a white (or light colored) wall needed. (Availability of refreshments is strongly encouraged.)

The seminars are two, three, or five interactive hours. They are aimed at all levels of station personnel, and deal with concerns for all to understand.

    Yes, I know 5 hours is a lot. Sometimes 2 hours seems as if it is a lot for news managers to schedule into saturated days and nights. I also know how valuable the time is and the cost for having people in on overtime can be.
    The presentation is a message, and an investment in your employees. Right now there are many video segments in the presentation, and they alone are over 45 minutes if all are played out. Explaining what is going on in the videos is sometimes almost as time consuming as the clips themselves. That's over an hour spent on documented accidents and video profiles relevant to the industry and safety.
     Some feel I can show an accident video that sends out the message "This is what happened, don't do that." For them, that seems to suffice for a safety message. But when the actions of the people are analyzed, and the circumstances are related, many times the lesson is huge, and needs to be explained as such. Employees are involved in many close calls and near-accidents, as well as times when they have needed to intervene to prevent accidents, sometimes for reasons they do not understand, until these discussions take place. Employers seldom hear of these incidents, but they are meaningful to relate in order to understand the risks/contingencies within a station's culture. Sometimes risks are actually produced by the culture. I refer to one industry standard known as the Heinrich Pyramid.

H.W. Heinrich changed the world of safety fundamentals forever with his pioneering work in the 1930s. One of his concepts is his accident triangle (pyramid) - For every 300 unsafe acts there are 29 minor injuries and one major injury. So many near misses lead to an analogous number of first aid injuries and onward through the logic to recordables and ending in the inevitability of a fatality.

    Many times discussions that the presentation provokes allows employees and managers to see how a cultural characteristic actually feeds into creating hazardous situations. This all takes time. Sometimes there are emotional responses to accidents, people who knew victims, and feelings about personal tragedies triggered. News people are thick-skinned by the nature of their work, but the seminar is not the place for that shield to be up. It's the place for them to be open, frank, and unguarded in their input and response. Their lives are at stake as drivers, first responders, agents for the news directive, and workers who routinely approach areas the general public is warned to avoid.
    I am delighted when a news veteran tells me that he hated the thought of sitting through a safety presentation, and 3, 4, or 5 hours later, he was delighted to have done it. "I never knew so much has happened in the industry...." is commonly related to me. "I'm so glad my managers took the time and spent the money for this," is also related.
    At some stations I actually (sometimes unknowingly) show evidence that a cultural change needs to be made at the station. At others I only need to enrich the already received message. The decision is yours.
    I believe it was the President of Harvard once said: "If you think education is expensive, try ignorance."
    I can only hope my presentations could have some sort of comparison to a Harvard education, but one aspect of our educational result that can be compared is that is that we transform lives, and actually save lives through the education provided.
    "We" refers to the managers that set up the presentations and do the incredible coordination work, and funding to make them happen. It's a great investment.

"Thank you, thank you, thank you!!! I am a photographer/engineer and had the pleasure of attending one of your safety seminars in Omaha, Nebraska, recently. I now have a whole new respect for these high priced trucks, overhead wires and lightning. Tonight I sit here thanking god nothing happened to me during the last 6-years. That's how long I have been operating our live truck without knowing that state law required I be at least 10-feet away from any overhead wire"........"Thanks again Mark!!!"

With the invention of the ENG Safety Newsletter, it is now possible for stations to carry on a repetitive informational program which will reinforce the need for safety for all newsroom personnel through monthly reminders. There is also a "no-stress," multiple choice test on the back page of all newsletters. Planning a presentation? Ask about continuing your safety awareness process with the cost-effective, repetitive, comprehensive newsletter. Documented education also helps satisfy OSHA requirements, and the ENG Safety Newsletter helps pave the way.