New and young workers: your first days on the job

By the end of the spring rush, Jordan had been at Greenway for three months. He had his forklift ticket, he could read a safety data sheet in under a minute, and he had filed eleven hazard and near-miss reports. When Greenway hired its next group of summer staff, Priya asked him to be a buddy for one of them: Kayla, seventeen, starting her first job ever as a yard and greenhouse helper.

Jordan remembered his own first morning: the binder, the video, the questions he did not know to ask. 'What do I actually tell her?' he asked Priya. 'Everything you wish someone had told you in your first week,' she said. 'And then watch her for a while, because she won't ask.'

This last lesson brings the course together. It explains why new and young workers face higher risk, what special rules protect young workers, what to ask and do in your first days at any job, and how an experienced worker can help a new one. It ends with Kayla's first week.

Why new workers get hurt

Lesson 1 noted that workers in their first month on a job are more than three times as likely to have a lost-time injury as those who have been there more than a year. That is true at every age. Several things combine to make the first weeks risky:

• Not knowing the hazards. A new worker has not yet learned where the forklifts go, which products are dangerous, or which step on the platform is loose.
• Not knowing the safe way. They may not yet have been trained on every task, or may have been trained in a rush.
• Wanting to make a good impression. New workers often say yes to everything, work fast, and avoid asking questions so they do not look slow or ignorant.
• Not knowing their rights. Many new workers do not know they can refuse unsafe work or that they should report every injury.
• Unfamiliar equipment and routines, even for people with experience elsewhere. A forklift driver from another company still needs to learn this yard.

Why young workers face extra risk

Young workers, usually defined as those under 25, have all the risks of new workers, often more strongly. They are more likely to be new, more likely to be in temporary or part-time jobs that get less training, and more likely to work in retail, food service, warehousing and other jobs with hazards that are easy to underestimate. Many have never been told they have rights. And many are less comfortable saying no to an adult in authority.

That is not because young people are careless. Studies of young workers' injuries keep finding the same causes as for everyone else: missing training, missing supervision, unsafe equipment and pressure to work fast. The answer is the same too: training, supervision and a workplace where it is normal to ask questions.

Rules for young workers in Arizona

Young workers in Arizona are protected by the federal Fair Labor Standards Act, enforced by the U.S. Department of Labor, and by Arizona's own child labor law. Where the two differ, the stricter rule applies. The federal rules for non-farm jobs include:

• Workers under 14 generally may not be employed in non-farm jobs, with a few exceptions such as delivering newspapers or working for their parents' business.
• Hours are limited for 14- and 15-year-olds: no more than 3 hours on a school day and 18 hours in a school week, no more than 8 hours on a non-school day and 40 hours in a non-school week, and only between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m., or 9 p.m. from June 1 to Labor Day.
• Workers under 18 may not do jobs the Department of Labor has declared hazardous, through rules called Hazardous Occupations Orders. They include driving forklifts and other power-driven hoisting equipment, operating most power-driven balers and compactors, operating power-driven meat slicers, most driving on public roads, roofing, excavation and work with explosives.
• Arizona's law adds its own limits on hours and types of work for minors, so employers must check both sets of rules.

At Greenway, Kayla, at 17, can work in the yard and greenhouse, but she may not drive the forklift or loader or operate the baler, and company policy also keeps workers under 18 off the wood chipper and away from pesticide mixing. Lily, at 16, can work the registers.

Your first days: what to expect

A good employer gives every new worker an orientation before they start work. It should cover, at the very least:

• your rights and duties, and how to raise a concern or refuse unsafe work;
• the main hazards of your job and how they are controlled;
• the PPE you need and how to use and care for it;
• the emergency plan: exits, alarms, the meeting point and first aid;
• how to report hazards, near misses and injuries;
• who your supervisor is, and who the committee members or safety contacts are;
• the rules about violence, harassment and working alone; and
• the training you will get before you do each task.

After orientation, you should be trained on each task before you do it alone, and supervised by someone who knows the work until you can do it safely. Being shown once is not the same as being trained. You should do the task with someone watching who can correct you.

Questions to ask

If your orientation does not cover these, ask. Asking shows you are taking the job seriously, and no reasonable supervisor will hold it against you.

Jordan's answer to the last question, on his own first day, had been three things: never walk in the forklift lane, never reach into a machine that is not locked out, and never go back into a building during an alarm. He passed the same three on to Kayla.

Being a good buddy or mentor

Many workplaces pair new workers with an experienced buddy. A good buddy can make more difference to a new worker's safety than any binder. Doug had been Jordan's buddy. Now Jordan tried to do for Kayla what Doug had done for him:

• Show, then watch, then let go. Show the task, have the new worker do it while you watch and coach, and only then let them do it alone.
• Explain why, not just what. 'Keep the bag close to your body, because it's twice as heavy on your back when it's at arm's length' sticks better than 'lift properly'.
• Point out the hazards that are easy to miss, like the wet ramp in the morning or the blind corner by the warehouse.
• Make questions normal. Ask them often what they are unsure about. New workers rarely volunteer it.
• Model good habits. Wear your PPE, use the walkways and report hazards, because they are watching what you do, not what you say.
• Tell the supervisor if the new worker is being asked to do things they are not ready for.

Capstone: Kayla's first week

Kayla's first week shows the whole course at work.

Bringing it together

Every lesson in this course comes back to a few ideas:

• Hazards are everywhere, and the job of everyone in the workplace is to find them and control them before they hurt someone.
• The strongest controls change the work, not the worker. Signs, rules and PPE are needed, but they work best as backups.
• Workers have rights, to know, to participate and to refuse, and the law protects them when they use those rights.
• Everyone has duties, and the more control you have, the more you carry.
• Reporting is how workplaces learn. Report hazards, near misses and every injury, and expect to hear back.
• Ask first. Say something. Stop if it's wrong.

Those last three short sentences were the ones Jordan had written on the back of his name tag in his second week. At the end of the summer, he noticed that Kayla had written them on hers.

Where to go next

This course is the starting point of the HSM University safety stream. The next courses in the safety core go deeper into the topics introduced here: HazCom in HSE-102, hazard recognition and risk assessment in HSE-103, protective equipment in HSE-104, fire safety and emergency preparedness in HSE-105, slips, trips and falls in HSE-106, manual handling and ergonomics in HSE-107, violence and harassment in HSE-108, psychological health and safety in HSE-109, and first aid in HSE-110 and HSE-111. Industry-specific courses, such as those for construction, retail, schools and warehouses, build on the same foundation.