Workplace Accommodations, LOTO Deaths and Creative Cooking: What I’m Reading This Week

This week, I feel as though I am only moving by taking one step forward and two steps back. I managed to cross some items off my to-do list, but that two-do list has grown threefold.

I’m employing a variety of tactics to calm myself down and feel less overwhelmed: setting a timer to complete tasks, listening to audiobooks, going for walks, evening cups of herbal tea and chatting with friends.

However your week is faring, I hope you can do something you enjoy and find other ways to recharge your batteries.

Until next time, stay safe and be well!

Workplace Accommodations

The U.S. Department of Labor announced a new tool that provides access to more than 700 accommodation ideas for workers with disabilities and their employers.

The Situations and Solutions Finder offers ideas for small and large organizations in the private and public sectors across industries. The tool offers the option to filter and save results by disability, limitation and/or occupation.

“Accommodations are at the heart of the Americans with Disabilities Act, and they’re about maximizing productivity for workers with disabilities, plain and simple,” said Taryn M. Williams, assistant secretary for Disability Employment Policy in a statement. “By allowing people to learn what has worked for others in similar, even if not exactly the same, situations, this new resource empowers employers, as well as employees or job applicants themselves, to ensure disabled workers have access to what they need to do their best on the job.”

Accommodations need to be tailored to the individual worker and workplace, but the new tool can help spark ideas and shape conversations.

View the tool, powered by the Job Accommodation Network, here.

LOTO Deaths

I saw this story in The Wall Street Journal. It’s a human interest piece, but it is a good reminder of the humans who work the line. It’s a great reminder of why safety professionals do what they do: to ensure that workers can go home unharmed at the end of their shift.

This story remembers some lives lost due to failure to properly lockout/tagout (LOTO). According to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, about 85 people are killed and 364 are amputated as a result of LOTO.

Some workers may not want the hassle of LOTO procedures, and some companies don’t want to slow production down for any reason.

John Keilman’s reporting found that a furniture manufacturer created a lockout alternative so as to not interrupt a key aspect of the furniture making process. A 65-year-old worker tried to make a repair but was crushed to death.

Sometimes, like when you’re stuck in traffic, the minutes can drag on; sometimes, like when you’re on your phone, the minutes can sneak by. On the production line, every minute matters. Companies must choose how workers spend their time. As my dad says, “You can do the job fast or you can do the job right, but you can’t do both.”

Creative Cooking

NPR did some fabulous coverage of client change and food that I just discovered a couple days ago. While watching cooking shows, my mom sometimes remarks how the chefs find ways to reuse everything, including scraps we’d probably toss in our home kitchen. It dawned on me that I needed to see the situation through a different lens: Chefs are running a business, and they’re trying to maximize profits and minimize losses.

This story about Shuggie’s Trash Pie takes that idea one step further by thinking about the global problem of food waste and the effects it is having on our planet.

Shuggie’s, a San Francisco-based restaurant, works with local suppliers to rescue food that is perfectly edible but maybe has some bruises or that they have a surplus of or that are unused. For example, the discard from commercially made oat milk can be turned into pizza dough or the green tops of carrots that can be the base of a chimichurri sauce.

Drawn Down estimates that the entire process of making food, from working the land to the finished product on shelves, contributes to one-third of the world’s planet-warming pollution. Worse, the food nonprofit ReFED estimates that 38% of the food in the United States’ food supply goes uneaten.

According to research from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, people spend more to dine out than cook in, meaning the restaurant industry is in a position to make a real impact. People may need convincing to embrace new foods like halibut cheek, but places like Shuggie’s seem up to the challenge.

Read and hear more here.