Southeast Michigan Contractors Issue 4 2023 15 MIOSHA How to be a Better Contractor As a professional, how often do you take advantage of opportunities to get better? Admittedly, this means different things to different people, but most will think of taking advantage of training and education opportunities. Training classes, professional seminars, advice from accountants and other business owners, and even lessons learned from previous jobs all contribute to your knowledge base and help you be better than you were…and prevent you from re-visiting past mistakes. When the opportunity arises to learn something from an expert in another trade or industry, we jump on the chance. Why? Because it is how we come better at what we do. Each interaction teaches us something new and we become a little bit better than we were. This is the wonder of new technology; we have instant access to massive amounts of information to continuously improve our skill base. We can access the skills and expertise of others that make our path to improvement much easier. With limited time and resources, why not let someone else do the heavy lifting for you. But what about safety? Quite often it is looked as a ‘thing.’ People talk about safety as though it is a Netflix subscription; you either have it or you don’t. Equally as common is the “safety is common sense” approach. Nothing could be further from the truth though. If safety were indeed simply ‘common sense’ it would indicate that injuries only happen to dumb people or that they intend to get injured. The truth is safety is recognizing a hazard and take steps to avoid injury or death. Being safe is a process; we learn from our own experience and from others to recognize and avoid hazards. The more we know, the more injuries can be prevented. This is where MIOSHA’s Consultation, Education, & Training (CET) Division cannot just help you improve your safety and health, but also make it easy. Here are some ways we can help: » Consultation services—You’ve got questions, we’ve got answers. Our
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