We’re all familiar with those signs that boast “X Days Since the Last Accident.”
Whether or not those signs actually work as intended, wanting to celebrate accident-free days, weeks, and months is understandable. After all, absolutely nobody benefits from accidents. Not the workers harmed by them, not the employer who has to fill out forms and conduct investigations, not the team who has to find ways to make up for the lost time – no one.
It’s in everyone’s interest to reduce prevent accidents. And thankfully, doing that is easier than ever.
We’re not working in the dark anymore. The safety profession has been active for decades and has only become more sophisticated over time. We don’t just have a desire to avoid accidents – we know how to prevent them, too.
So, let’s do a quick rundown of what employers can and should do to control hazards, minimize risks, and ensure that everyone who works for them can finish their shift without harm.
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12 Ways to Do Safety Right
Simply put, the best way to prevent incidents on the job is to make safety a core part of the organization’s value system. Building a safety culture that takes hold from the ground up will also give you great results.
Those can be difficult concepts to pin down, however, and even more difficult to act on. But achieving them starts with covering all your safety bases. You have to start doing safety to show that you value safety. And once it’s clear that you value safety, it can spread throughout the workplace culture.
Here are some of the best ways to do safety:
- Invest in training and training tools – Go beyond the essentials and arm your entire workforce with the knowledge they need to work safely (and understand the value of doing so).
- Create awareness of the hazards workers might encounter – Training achieves this, but so do safety signs, regular communication, and informal refresher sessions.
- Implement a clear cease-from-work policy – Employees need to know that they should stop working as soon as a safety issue is identified, and that they are not expected to resume working until it has been fully resolved.
- Remove all barriers to reporting safety issues – Mobile software can streamline and simplify the reporting process, clarifying the chain of command will ensure everyone knows who they should report to, and making sure there are no incentives tied to safety outcomes will encourage employees to report any problem or incident that comes up.
- Reassure employees that reporting safety concerns is welcome – Never, ever reprimand, punish, or retaliate against an employee for reporting a safety issue (always aim to find a solution to the problem, not someone to blame for it).
- Ensure that the safety manager is always available – Workers should know how to locate the safety manager, be free to ask them a question or bring up an issue, and know that the safety manager will take action right away.
- Conduct regular safety inspections – All tools and equipment, as well as working procedures and site conditions, should be inspected on a regular basis. There should be some kind of safety inspection at least daily (rather than only conducting them “as needed”). This will help you catch issues before they become more serious, while also setting the tone that safety should be prioritized.
- Investigate any accident promptly and follow up in a timely manner – Take action to rectify any issue brought to your attention, but also communicate to the employees what has been done about it.
- Keep records of all incidents – Everything from near misses to fatalities should be documented thoroughly, organized logically, and stored in a way that is accessible so it can be used to uncover trends and issues that should be addressed.
- Hold regular toolbox talks and safety moments – Formal training sessions are few and far in between, but these informal huddles allow you to create an ongoing dialog about safety, remind workers of the hazards around them and the procedures they need to follow, and give everyone an opportunity to give input and feedback.
- Encourage safety mentorship among your team – Workers who have been with your company longer can keep an eye out for unsafe behavior in newer workers and show them how to correct it. This also creates a sense of ownership over safety from the more seasoned employees, which encourages buy-in for safety.
- Communicate safety from all levels – Of course the safety manager cares about safety – that’s their job. But the workers should also be hearing positive safety messaging from supervisors, managers, and company leadership. Otherwise, they’ll get the impression that working safely is a low priority for the organization.
(Learn about 7 Leading Indicators of Safety Worth Tracking)
Employer Responsibility for Creating a Safe Workplace
We often think of safety as something the employees do – after all, they’re the ones who have to climb to dangerous heights, work the power tools, and be on the front line of customer-facing interactions. But fundamentally, the responsibility for safety rests with the employer.
They are the ones who set the tone and expectation for the workplace. If they treat safety as a necessary evil that gets in the way of production but has to be done to avoid fines, then that’s how the workers are likely to see it as well.
It’s also their decision whether to invest time, money, and resources into safety to begin with. The employees can only work with what they’ve been given and if they’re only given the bare minimum, they won’t have the resources they need to uphold a safe work environment.
And of course, it’s a legal requirement. Under the Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) Act, employers have the responsibility to provide a safe workplace for employees. Specifically, employers are responsible for:
- Ensuring the workplace is free from recognized hazards
- Complying with rules, standards, and regulations
- Providing safe, adequate, and well-maintained tools
- Using proper warning labels, signs, and color codes
- Providing adequate safety training (in the language the workers are most comfortable with)
- Regularly examining workplace conditions to ensure they conform with all applicable standards
That’s essential, and meeting those legal requirements will ensure a relatively safe workplace.
But to really stretch out the days between accidents, employers need to go beyond these legal requirements and take a more proactive approach to safety.