In case of an emergency...

In recent weeks, our amazing HR team has put quite a bit of thought and effort into ensuring that we provide a safe office. While, of course, we mean for the office to be a safe place where people of all walks can feel welcome, this time around, we mean this rather more literally – how safe, physically, are our Pilots?

Being safe while working comes with different levels of protection. There are jobs in which protective gear of different kinds is needed – take construction or the medical field, for example. Some jobs expose you to dangers that need an informed and well-educated team who know the ins and outs of the dangers they face. Working with chemicals and the many dangers, from spills to fumes, to accidental contacts, come to mind, as well as handling power tools, specialized vehicles, or other machinery.

But even offices can bring dangers, from small to large.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration's (OSHA) requirements hold that once a company has ten employees, legal requirements hold the employer to ensure the team is protected. It further requires them to be informed of their options and steps to remain protected.

A part of that is that we are bound to laws and regulations to ensure that we not only take care of our team but ensure that everyone is safe while we're doing so.

As fun as OSHA videos might be when they light-heartedly show hazards to gain engagement with the viewers, work safety is essential. After all, as an adult, you are likely to spend the bulk of your time at your place of employment.

Examples of what your workplace needs to provide you with - even if you are not driving around with a forklift – are:

• Provide a workplace free from serious recognized hazards and comply with standards, rules, and regulations issued under the OSH-Act.
• Examine workplace conditions to make sure they conform to applicable OSHA standards.
• Employers must provide safety training in a language and vocabulary workers can understand and offer other languages for workers as needed.
• Post, at a prominent location within the workplace, the OSHA poster (or the state-plan equivalent) informing employees of their rights and responsibilities.
• Report to the nearest OSHA office all work-related fatalities within 8 hours, all work-related inpatient hospitalizations, all amputations, and all losses of an eye within 24 hours.
• Keep records of work-related injuries and illnesses. (Note: Employers with ten or fewer employees and employers in specific low-hazard industries are exempt from this requirement.

At an office, work-related injuries can be tripping hazards, injuries related to electrocution, cuts, scrapes, bruises and breaks, noise-related issues in server rooms, and so forth.

A part of being safe in any office includes for the team members to know how to proceed in case of an emergency. For people in office buildings, the most practiced is fire. Heading to emergency exits, leaving the building orderly, gathering at a designated location – all of these steps have been practised by most office workers at least once in their life. Depending on the size of the company, the occupied building, and other factors, drills might also include the use of firehoses, and extinguishers, cleaning up spills of hazardous materials that may be flammable, or how to assist disabled coworkers during evacuation.

Other important things to know are the locations of first aid kits, how to help with injuries, and possibly who in the office can assist with resuscitation/CPR. It also helps to know where other emergency supplies and contacts are.

Other emergencies can be several natural disasters, such as floods, earthquakes, tornados, or tsunamis. Depending on where you are located, some of these are naturally occurring; in other areas, they are nearly impossible – think of a tsunami in a non-coastal state.

Right now, we're adjusting a few older processes and creating many new ones. We check up on items and future training for our team to ensure that everyone in the office will be taken care of in case of an emergency. Even though we are a studio that embraces remote work, we hope all team members will join up on these meetings, as things like earthquake awareness are good to know for anyone working in the greater Seattle area, for example.

While we do not have any impaired coworkers right now, there are considerations to be had in case of an emergency. Might a deaf coworker need to be in the line of sight of the emergency strobe lights? Does a blind coworker need an appointed assistant to quickly navigate the emergency exits? How can we help a physically impaired coworker to get into an earthquake-safe location in time? We are preparing documentation for such cases to have at hand if this does come up for us, as every office should for their employees.

In the coming weeks, we will also have more resources for our internal helpdesk page that will give information on safety measures in the office and at home, which will be a mix of old, known info and new, previously not recorded info!

Also, remember that many work safety rules and recommendations can be found in your employee handbook, or, as we call it, the Pilot's Manual!

If you are a Pilot right now, check the HR section of SharePoint for the first resources coming in the coming days and weeks! And, as always, feel free to ping the HR team if you have questions or ideas.