Safety Rewards and Incentives that Result in Safety Improvements
If used correctly, safety rewards and incentives can be very effective. Rewards foster accountability. Rewarding people for positive things gets them to do those things. It’s basic human behavior. People want to get caught doing the right thing. These principles should be used to improve safety performance. Selecting the Right Rewards Different levels of an organization should be rewarded for different things. The reward should be tailored to the result the individual can control. Thus, rewards for people at lower levels should be based primarily on activities rather than organizational results. It’s pointless to base a front-line shift worker’s reward on [...]
When the Worst Happens
You work hard at keeping your team safe from any injuries, let alone a fatality. But when the worst happens, how do you help them to cope? When workers have witnessed or been involved in a horrible scene – a fall from heights or entanglement for example – it can haunt them for years. They need prompt help to prevent short-term shock from turning into chronic post-traumatic stress. Stress can harm a career, relationships as well as mental and physical health. An affected worker needs to talk to someone within a day or two of the tragedy. In this debriefing, [...]
Visitor Safety & Security
Just about every workplace has them — visitors. How can you help them stay safe while they tour your work area? Like most companies, you probably have a well developed workplace safety policy to protect your workers. But does that policy cover contractors, visitors and temporary workers (which, for the sake of simplicity, we’ll refer to collectively as “visitors”) who come to your facilities? Failure to account for visitors is a huge blind spot that can lead not only to injuries but liability. And even if you do have a visitors’ safety policy, you need to ensure that it’s effective. [...]
Workplan: Near Miss Reporting Management
Seventy-five percent of all accidents are preceded by one or more near misses, according to the National Safety Council. So, if you’re trying to reduce the number of injuries and incidents with property damage and other incident-related loss, it makes sense to measure and manage your near misses. Why Near Misses Are So Important It’s been recognized that focusing on minor incidents, including near misses provides the wherewithal to reduce the probability of major incidents. Near misses occur much more frequently than serious incidents. They’re also smaller in scale, simpler to analyze and easier to resolve. Working from the top [...]
Selling Management on the Value of Safety Perception Surveys
As safety budgets shrink, companies are under mounting pressure to ensure that every dollar they spend on safety programs, activities and equipment directly helps to improve safety performance. But in making decisions about how to reduce injuries and illnesses, companies often overlook a crucial factor: the perceptions of their own workers. Studies show that workers’ perceptions of a company’s safety culture and senior management’s commitment to safety have a measurable impact on injury rates. More precisely, the evidence suggests that in companies with low injury rates, a high percentage of workers have a positive perception of management’s commitment to safety; [...]
Personal Liability of CEOs for OSHA Violations
Make sure your CEO understands that he or she can be held personally liable for certain safety violations. Give your CEO this briefing to make your case. OSHA cited two New Jersey corporations for willful violations. One citation carried a $96,300 fine; the other a $196,000 fine. In both cases, OSHA also cited the father-and-son team that owned the corporations. The father was the president and the only officer and director of both corporations. The son, a lawyer whose only clients were the corporations, ran the corporate offices out of his basement. Corporate officers normally aren’t personally liable for the [...]
PPE for Spill Cleanup – Quick Tips
Employees who are engaged in emergency spill response operations no matter where they occur are covered by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA’s) Hazardous Waste Operations and Emergency Response (HAZWOPER) standard, 29 Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) 1910.120. As first steps in limiting worker exposure to spill hazards, engineering controls and administrative (work practice) controls must first be considered. If circumstances prohibit the use of engineering controls or work practices, or these measures do not sufficiently reduce worker exposures, OSHA mandates that personal protective equipment (PPE) be used. Once the need for PPE is established, a careful evaluation of [...]
When Does the Lockout Tagout Standard Apply?
OSHA’s Control of Hazardous Energy (Lockout/Tagout) general industry standard covers the servicing and maintenance of machines and equipment in which the unexpected energization or startup of machines or equipment, or release of stored energy, could cause injury to employees. Employees servicing or maintaining machines or equipment may be exposed to serious physical harm or death if hazardous energy is not properly controlled. The Lockout/Tagout (LO/TO) standard establishes minimum performance requirements for the control of hazardous energy sources such as electrical, mechanical, hydraulic, pneumatic, chemical, and thermal. 29 CFR 1910.147(a)(1)(ii)(A-E) of the general industry standard identifies the following areas the standard [...]
How to Use Total Cost Assessment to Demonstrate Business Value of Your Safety Initiatives
Convincing senior management to invest in safety initiatives can be an uphill battle, especially when the initiative isn’t specifically required by law. Of course, demonstrating that the initiative will cut costs and/or boost revenues is a great way to sell it to the business people who control the purse strings. But doing so is easier said than done. So how can you demonstrate that a safety initiative will have a positive effect on your company’s bottom line? One possibility is to use Total Cost Assessment (TCA), an accounting method that’s designed to measure the true profitability of EHS investments. Although TCA is [...]
5 Steps to Emergency Preparedness
If the California flooding has taught us anything, it's that emergencies can happen at any time. Your workers play a key role in the execution of your company’s emergency preparedness plan. Given the current conditions, maybe it’s a good time to review the topic of emergency preparedness with your workers and go over the 5 steps to emergency preparedness. Step 1: Evaluate Your Existing Plans Your first step is to review and re-evaluate your company’s emergency response plan, making sure that plans are in place for all possible types of emergencies. These can include, but aren’t limited to: Fires and [...]
Meeting Minutes – Tips and Tricks
SIMPLE TIPS FOR BETTER MEETING MINUTES Meeting minutes help with communication at work and they ensure people have a common understanding of what the meeting was about, what was done, and what they should be doing next. PURPOSE OF MINUTES Minutes are particularly helpful for formal meetings as they serve as a permanent record of the discussion and the decisions that were made. A written record of the meeting in the form of minutes can be especially useful for people who were not able to attend in person as they get to see what came up in the meeting. TIPS [...]
Remind Workers to Pay Attention Around Flammables
If your workplace includes the use or handling of flammable substances, workers need special training to recognize and avoid the hazards that go along with them. Three main reasons to pay attention are that work areas contain flammable liquids like fuels, solvents and cleaning chemicals that can explode and burst into flames if something causes them to ignite, the things your workers do while working with or near flammable liquids can ignite fires and explosions and although you’ve taken steps to protect your workers—like installing ventilation and storing flammables in specially designed containers—workers also need to do their part by [...]
