D6: Safety Challenges and Solutions for Younger and Older Workers

Music City Center 

Room: Meeting Room 205 A 

Today's workforce is a mixture of older and younger workers creating injury prevention challenges. Most studies indicate that older workers tend to have fewer accidents, but they tend to be more severe and require a longer recovery period. Younger workers tend to experience more frequent and less severe injuries due to distractions and lack of experience or poor training. This presentation will address the best practices to meet these challenges. Companies are providing younger employees with detailed work process training conducted by a safety conscious senior employee. The training is customized to the learning traits of younger employees. This includes concise information, workplace examples with ongoing coaching and observation by a senior employee. Older employees are used to mentor younger employees on work process and hands on training. Younger employees assume the more physically demanding and technology-based tasks that could contribute to any injury to an older employee. Employers that understand the skills and limitations of young and old employees can significantly reduce their injury and illness exposure.

Upon completion, the participant will be able to:

• Differentiate the safety pitfalls of young and older employees.
• Leverage the strengths of young employees (i.e., understanding of technology) and older employees (i.e., job knowledge).
• Strengthen your current steps to protect older workers (e.g., equipment updates, safe work procedures, etc.).
• Utilize risk assessments that consider aging factors (sight, vision, flexibility, hearing, etc.).
• Illustrate best practices to ensure the safety of young and older workers. 

Introductory

Polling

Q&A

Changing Workplaces, Workforce, and Work Arrangements

Hazard Recognition/Exposure Assessment

Management/Leadership