4 Often Overlooked Types of New Workers—and the Different Dangers They Face

4 Often Overlooked Types of New Workers—and the Different Dangers They Face

Group of young workers standing confident in work place.

The facts are clear: new hires are at a much greater risk of injury in their first year on the job. But not all new workers face the same risks. Depending on their age, background, work history, and other issues, they may face very different dangers in the workplace.

This is an outline of four classes of new workers, and some of the risks that can be particularly challenging to them. As new hires are onboarded, be sure to pay attention to these potential sources of injury in order to keep these at-risk groups of employees safe.

Young workers

Young workers are physiologically different from the rest of the workforce in ways that can put them at risk. Their organs and musculoskeletal systems are not yet fully developed, making them more susceptible to harm from certain types of trauma and hazardous substances. Additionally, as NIOSH points out, “young workers may be exposed to suspected asthma-causing agents and substances that disrupt the function or maturation of the endocrine and central nervous systems.”

Young workers also get a bad rap for being distractible. It’s trendy to blame cellphones and distraction for the high rate of incidents, but several studies suggest that injury rates among young workers are not a new trend or a result of technological distraction. A study conducted by the CDC looked at injury rates of young workers from 1998–2007, before the first iPhone was released. It found that the nonfatal injury rate “was approximately two times higher” than older workers. This is still the case, as a recent article in ISHN notes that the current generation of 18–24-year-olds is experiencing a similar rate. Instead of blaming technological influences for distraction, we should look at other human factors that are likely to influence young workers, like overconfidence, ambiguity, and rushing. And when you combine these human factors with a general lack of experience, it leads to the grim emergency-room data that shows that young workers are injured twice as often as their older counterparts.

It’s also worth noting that many people believe that young workers are more likely to bounce back quickly from an injury and they are more likely to avoid an injury in the first place thanks to quick reflexes. But their youth can also be a disadvantage as, from a utilitarian point of view, a young worker who receives a life-long injury, such as a herniated disc or compressed nerves in the spine, will be affected for many more years than an older worker who suffers the same outcome. And this high degree of confidence in young workers’ physical resilience can skew their perspective of risk in life-altering ways.

New to country, language or culture

A person who has just secured a job in a new country will, by definition, be a new worker. In 2021, foreign-born worker deaths in the United States were led by Hispanics, whose working population grew 16.7% and for whom workplace fatalities grew 42%. Similarly, non-Hispanic Asian workers saw a 40.2% leap in workplace fatalities and a 30.8% growth in the working population

 In both cases, as these working populations added more new workers, the number of fatalities grew even more rapidly. This is not a coincidence. We’ve already seen that new workers are at much greater risk of injury, and foreign-born workers have to contend with a tremendous amount of change all at once.

Additionally, depending on their circumstances, there could be many reasons why foreign-born workers feel unable to say no to unsafe working conditions or ask questions if the instructions for the task at hand are ambiguous.

One does not have to be an immigrant in order to encounter these challenges. A workplace may operate in a language or dialect that a domestic-born worker is unfamiliar with, rely heavily on slang or technical jargon, or be situated in an unfamiliar regional culture. A move from one city or state to the next may be enough for someone to encounter all these problems.

Older workers

Older workers tend to be more experienced workers. But experience at previous jobs doesn’t necessarily translate to the new employer, and the length of time at their current job is a much stronger factor in injury risk than the number of total years they’ve spent in the workforce.

Experience can also be a double-edged sword. As safety consultant Larry Pearlman points out, older workers can often misjudge their own abilities. Pearlman says that when encountering potentially dangerous situations in the workplace, older workers can think, “When have I seen something like this before? and rely on their past experience and performance in similar situations. The trouble is that they sometimes fail to recognize that hazards, safety protocols, and technology have changed. Their ability to accurately assess and react to the situation may also have changed with age. All of which increases the risk of injury when older workers switch employers.

There’s also run-of-the-mill complacency, which can set in when someone feels like they have ample experience with a certain context or task—even if the specific job is new to them. And job-specific inexperience and general complacency can be a dangerous mix. These factors all contribute to the fact that older workers who are new to a job are at such great risk of injury.

New situations for experienced workers

Change is change, period. And with enough workplace change, any worker becomes a new worker. Usually, the biggest change that can happen to a worker is when they get a new job. But sometimes an employee can show up to the same worksite as always and find that the specific environment, workflow or tasks they need to do have shifted to such a great degree that a long-tenured worker suddenly becomes “new. When a new mechanical or digital process is introduced, when new regulations need to be followed, or when high employee turnover creates a new social dynamic, workers of all experience levels are subject to the same human factors we commonly see in new hires. This also applies to temporary workers who may have general experience but lack knowledge of specific tasks and the work environment.

This advice is meant to be broadly applicable. That means it can’t always cover the nuances of every single type of new worker. Be sure to consider the specific type of new worker that is present in your workforce and adjust your takeaways accordingly.

This blog post is an adapted excerpt from the safety guide Fitting in Fast: Making a Safe Workplace for New Hires, which examines data and best practices regarding the protection of new hires in the workplace. Read the guide today for research, insights and strategies to protect new workers from injury.

Fitting in Fast: Making a Safe Workplace for New Hires

Protecting new hires is a huge safety challenge. How you introduce them to your company’s culture will dramatically affect their immediate safety and instill shared responsibilities for positive outcomes in the future.

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