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you cannot hope to cover all possible examples of injury or illness. Instead, focus on the
following behaviors and situations you observe:
- Do employees wash their hands thoroughly before and after contact with each animal?
- Are hand-washing facilities kept clean and supplied with soap and paper towels?
- When cleaning the animals’ cages, do employees wear appropriate protection such as
gloves? - What is the procedure for disposing of animal waste, and do all employees know and
follow the procedure? - When an animal is being transferred from one cage to another, are there enough staff
members present to provide backup assistance in case the animal becomes unruly? - What should an employee do if he or she is bitten or scratched?
- What if an animal exhibits signs of being ill?
- Have there been any recent incidents that raised concerns about safety?
Once you have posed and answered questions like these, it should be easier to narrow
down the information so that the result is a reasonably brief, easy to read memo that
will get employees’ attention and persuade them to adopt safe work practices.
Planning Your Investigation for Information
Now let’s imagine that you work for a small accounting firm whose president would like
to start sending a monthly newsletter to clients and prospective clients. He is aware of
newsletter production service vendors that provide newsletters to represent a particular
accounting firm. He has asked you to compile a list of such services, their prices and
practices, so that the firm can choose one to employ.
If you are alert, you will begin your planning immediately, while your conversation with
the president is still going on, as you will need more information before you can gauge
the scope of the assignment. Approximately how many newsletter vendors does your
president want to know about—is three or four enough? Would twenty be too many? Is
there a set budget figure that the newsletter cost must not exceed? How soon does your
report need to be done?
Once you have these details, you will be able to plan when and where to gather the
needed information. The smartest place to begin is right in your office. If the president
has any examples of newsletters he has seen from other businesses, you can examine
them and note the contact information of the companies that produced them. You may
also have an opportunity to ask coworkers if they know or even have copies of any such
newsletters.
Assuming that your president wants to consider more than just a couple of vendors, you
will need to expand your search. The next logical place to look is the Internet. In some
companies, employees have full Internet access from their office computers; other
companies provide only a few terminals with Internet access. Some workplaces allow no
Internet access; if this is the case, you can visit your nearest public library.