MONTEREY PARK/SAN FRANCISCO -- The State Compensation Insurance Fund will hold a comprehensive safety seminar, “How to Be a Safety Champion: Communicating Safety…A Team Effort,” on June 5 in Monterey Park. The seminar will teach managers and supervisors how to communicate job-related safety information in a way that engages the audience on both a professional and personal level.

Anyone who is responsible for providing and ensuring safety communication at the jobsite – managers, supervisors, lead employees - can benefit from the seminar.

Featured speakers will be Michael Melnick, President of Prevention Plus, Inc.; Deogracia Cornelio, Associate Director of Education for UCLA’s Labor Occupational Safety Program; State Fund Senior Loss Control Consultant Alfred Varela, and State Fund Loss Control Consultant Earl Ofari Hutchinson.

The seminar will highlight communication as a two-way, team effort. For safety communication to be successful, not only does one side have to convey the message effectively, but the other side must also understand the message. To this end, the event will break safety communication into four separate elements:

The first section of the seminar, “Batteries Not Included - The Energized Approach for Achieving a Safe, Healthy and Productive Workplace,” Melnik will show how choosing the right approach to developing, implementing and supporting safety programs can ultimately maximize their effectiveness. His presentation offers a time-tested approach that increases the success of safety programs by energizing the work environment with participants who are motivated, receptive and involved.

During the second part of the seminar, “The True Cost of Injuries,” State Fund’s Earl Ofari Hutchinson will explain the cost benefits of safety communication and awareness. He will show why injury prevention is both cost and time-effective for employees and employers.

For the third portion of the seminar, “Overcoming Communication Barriers,” Cornelio and attendees will analyze the challenges to effective communication, and discuss the best practices to facilitate communication about safety in the workplace. The group will jointly review a case involving communication barriers and propose how to successfully communicate the safety issue at hand. 

The seminar closes with the topic, “Making Safety Personal,” State Fund’s Alfred Varela will demonstrate that safety is a quality-of-life issue, as well as an economic issue, for both employees and employers. He will show how safety presentations can have greater impact when they include personal stories and experiences.

The seminar is scheduled from 8:30 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. at State Fund’s Monterey Park District Office, 900 Corporate Center Drive, 1st Floor.  Registration and complimentary continental breakfast begin at 8:00 a.m. Free parking is available.

The Monterey Park seminar is part of a series of educational programs State Compensation Insurance Fund is holding throughout the state in order to help employers create safe workplaces. State Fund has the largest safety and health services program among California workers’ compensation insurance carriers.

Register now for this or other available seminars.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Established by the California Legislature in 1914, San Francisco-based State Compensation Insurance Fund is a self-supporting, nonprofit, fairly competitive public enterprise that provides workers’ compensation insurance coverage at cost to California employers.