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Take Time for Safety

26 minutesEN / ESSafety TrainingNo specific regulatory mandate - best practice for workplace safety culture and behavioral safety programs
Quick Answer

Take Time for Safety is a 26-minute online course that teaches employees how rushing, time pressure, and the desire to cut corners lead to workplace injuries and why taking time for safety is always the better choice. It is designed for employees and supervisors across all industries and includes a downloadable certificate of completion.

Course Overview

Time pressure is a contributing factor in a significant percentage of workplace incidents. When employees rush to meet deadlines, they skip safety steps, lose focus on their surroundings, and make poor decisions. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports over 2.6 million nonfatal workplace injuries in private industry annually, and safety professionals consistently identify rushing and time management as root causes during incident investigations. OSHA's emphasis on root cause analysis during inspections has increasingly focused on organizational factors - including production pressure and inadequate time allocation for safe work practices - as contributing causes of citations and incidents.

This course helps your employees understand the connection between time pressure and unsafe behavior. Through relatable workplace examples, your team will learn why rushing causes loss of focus, how skipping steps leads to errors that create hazards, and practical strategies for managing their time without compromising safety. The course reinforces that the time spent working safely is always less than the time lost to an injury, and that speaking up when deadlines conflict with safe work practices is an expected part of a healthy safety culture.

What You'll Learn

  • How rushing causes loss of focus and increases the likelihood of errors
  • The connection between time pressure and shortcut-taking behavior
  • Why the time spent on safety procedures is always less than injury recovery time
  • Common scenarios where production pressure leads to unsafe decisions
  • Strategies for managing work pace without compromising safety procedures
  • How to communicate with supervisors when deadlines conflict with safe work practices

Who Needs This Training

  • Production and manufacturing workers under output or quota pressure
  • Construction crews working against weather windows and project deadlines
  • Warehouse and distribution employees during peak shipping periods
  • Maintenance technicians responding to urgent equipment breakdown calls
  • Supervisors who must balance productivity targets with safety requirements
  • New employees who need to understand that safety takes priority over speed

Regulatory Background

While no specific OSHA standard addresses time management or rushing, OSHA's General Duty Clause requires employers to maintain workplaces free from recognized hazards. Production pressure that results in employees skipping safety procedures is a recognized organizational hazard. OSHA has cited employers under the General Duty Clause when investigations reveal that production quotas or schedule pressure contributed to safety failures. During incident investigations, OSHA routinely examines whether the employer's production expectations created conditions that encouraged unsafe shortcuts. Serious violations carry penalties up to $16,550, and a pattern of production-pressure-related incidents can escalate to willful citations at up to $165,514 each. OSHA's Voluntary Protection Programs (VPP) explicitly evaluate whether management systems balance production and safety, making this topic relevant to any employer pursuing VPP recognition.

Frequently Asked Questions

When employees feel pressured to meet deadlines or production quotas, they are more likely to skip safety procedures, rush through pre-use inspections, ignore warning signs, and take physical risks to save time. Research in occupational safety shows that time pressure reduces situational awareness and increases the frequency of errors. OSHA has documented cases where production pressure was identified as a root cause during fatality investigations.
Yes. While OSHA does not have a specific standard for production pressure, the General Duty Clause allows citations when an employer's management practices create or contribute to recognized hazards. If an OSHA investigation reveals that unrealistic production quotas led employees to skip lockout/tagout, bypass machine guards, or ignore other safety procedures, the employer can face citations for the underlying safety violations as well as potential General Duty Clause citations.
Employees should stop and communicate the conflict to their supervisor rather than taking unsafe shortcuts. A strong safety culture makes this communication expected and supported rather than penalized. This course teaches employees how to identify when time pressure is affecting their safety decisions and practical language for raising the concern with their supervisor. Employers should establish clear policies that safety takes priority over production targets.
Yes. At 26 minutes, this course works well for safety stand-down events and team safety meetings. The content uses relatable everyday examples that employees across all industries can connect with. Many employers use this course as a discussion starter, pausing after key points to facilitate team conversations about when rushing has affected safety in their specific work environment.
This course addresses one of the most common behavioral root causes of workplace injuries - the choice to prioritize speed over safety. It complements procedural safety training by helping employees understand why they are tempted to rush and providing strategies to resist that temptation. When combined with other behavioral safety courses, it forms part of a comprehensive approach that addresses the human factors driving unsafe behavior.
$29.95
per person
Volume Pricing
Team Size Price per Person
1 - 9$29.95
10 - 24$23.95
25 - 49$21.55
50 - 99$17.50
Subtotal $29.95
Language

This course is available in English and Spanish at no additional charge.

Certificate of completion included. Downloadable upon passing the final assessment.

$29.95
per person