KNOW THE SPECIAL HAZARDS OF YOUR WORK

Smaller ones have first-aid stations and safety or other personnel trained in first aid. A squad of workers can and should be organized and trained to treat minor burns, shock, and cases requiring artificial respiration. Such measures can save lives and help avoid serious disabilities. Electrical hazards can crop up almost anywhere. 

Exposed wires, crossed circuits, and carelessness can lead to serious shocks and burns. If you become aware of any wiring that is defective, waste no time calling it to the attention of someone who can correct it. We would like to stress this here: If someone is unconscious from electric shock, do not give up; artificial respiration and heart massage, continued over a period of hours, have been known to save people who appeared beyond hope of reviving. 

Be careful about floors and staircases wetted by chemicals or other liquid.  if found any danger of slipping, handholds should be provided;  

KNOW THE SPECIAL HAZARDS OF YOUR WORK

 No job is completely free of hazards, and each job may have its own special ones, Even sedentary occupations such as those of clerks and office workers are not entirely safe, Women who work at home should carefully read Chapter 40, in which we discuss danger spots in the home and how to avoid accidents which cripple and kill many people each year. 

In addition, salespeople, teachers, librarians, and others who deal with large numbers of people in the course of their work should know and do as much as possible about the increased danger of exposure to colds and other respiratory ailments.

IS YOUR job good for you?

YOUR’ WORK AND YOUR HEALTH

This is no rhetorical question. First of all, obviously enough, a job should provide reasonably adequate earnings to enable you and your family to afford good diet, good housing, health care, recreation, and other essentials. It should do more. Ideally, it should be interesting to you, should offer some challenge, should provide opportunities for advancement, and should provide an emotionally healthy rather than emotionally toxic environment. Physicians are increasingly aware that how a person feels about him- self or she heavily influences health as well as recovery from illness -and that high on the list of important feelings is self-esteem.

As one wise physician has put it, the man who is able to regard himself highly believes himself, capable of mastering the vicissitudes of life. He adapts by attacking his environment constructively and shaping it to his needs. He who has low self-esteem struggles valiantly but pessimistically, some- times passively accepting fact, sometimes destructively attacking. Self-esteem is the partner of hope, and hope is the chief agent of occupational mental health. 

More and more men and women now earn their livelihoods in organizations-companies, government agencies, educational and other institutions. And as their social and economic status becomes more dependent upon their roles in their work organizations, how they feel about themselves is related to a significant extent to what happens to them in those organizations. It is not always possible to fully achieve an ideal. Yet many of us could come much closer to it in our work than we do if we took real inventory -a hard look at our work, its satisfactions and dissatisfactions, specific possibilities for improving the job we have or finding something more satisfactory.

If your job does not pay you enough for your needs, is it possible for you to get a raise in salary? Are there courses you might take or other things you might do that could lead to promotion? If not, is it possible that you might find a job that has more to offer? Is there helpful information and possibly sound advice and guidance, you might get from a foreman or supervisor? In particular, perhaps these people or others could help you with an objective view of your situation, capabilities, and opportunities. Some cities have job counselors or provide other means to help you determine how to fit yourself for a better position. Vocational guidance has made considerable progress in studying the "square peg in the round hole" problem. 

Work stress and Relaxation Tecniques

Work stress and Relaxation Tecniques

Many things enter into the art of living, and relaxation is certainly one of them. It is valuable not only in and of itself for the enjoyment of life but also as a means of preventing undue physical fatigue, boredom, and tension, and for actually making work easier and 'more enjoyable. Ours is an age of rapid change, of increasing complexity in social and industrial organization. We are busier with mental and less with physical work. We live at a faster pace. 

There are more and more challenges and opportunities-and perhaps, more and more stresses, pressures and, deadlines. How people react to stress depends, of course, upon very many things, and certainly included among them are general health, physical fitness, fatigue, and emotional well-being. And relaxation is an important influence on all of these.

Almost everyone knows from experience that pronounced tiredness from day to day can, if extended, produce chronic fatigue. When this occurs, the weariness sensations are intensified, appearing not only at the end of a day but during the day and even early in the morning. Along with the weariness, there may be increased irritability, a tendency to lapse into depression or blue moods, a general lack of drive and loss of initiative. Many people have the idea that they can't afford to take time for rest and relaxation, that in the modern world it's essential to work long and hard or you won't keep up. 

But this is to overlook, for one thing, the relationship between performance and working hours. While more studies are needed of the relationship between mental work performance and working hours, there are guidelines to be found in the many investigations carried out in factories.

They have shown repeatedly that when working time is shortened, hourly performance improves, whereas lengthening the work period has the opposite effect. In many cases it has been observed that after more than ten hours of work, overall performance falls off decidedly, because the slowing down of working speed due to fatigue is not compensated for by the longer period worked. Longer working schedules are frequent in wartime and boom conditions. 

But the overtime worked often proves of little value because productivity fails to increase to the extent that was expected. Various studies have shown that overtime work not only cuts down on performance per hour but also leads to a characteristic increase in absence due to illness and accidents.