Safety Programs Save Money
Injuries Cost Businesses however, Safety Programs Save Money
Have you ever thought about how much a workplace injury costs your business?
OSHA’s $afety Pays tool is an online calculator. This tool uses current data on workplace injury costs to calculate the direct and indirect costs to your business. This helpful resource emphasizes the importance of having an organized safety program. The results may surprise you.
Whether you are a small start-up, an established business, or just ready to start managing safety in a more responsible way, there are some simple steps you can take. Completing these steps will give you a solid base to begin your safety program.
10 Simple Steps
- Lead by example
- Establish safety and health as core values
- Implement a reporting system
- Provide training
- Conduct inspections
- Collect hazard control ideas
- Implement hazard controls
- Address emergencies
- Seek input on workplace changes
- Make improvements
Keeping the Safety Program a Priority
Communicate to your workers that making sure they go home safely is the top priority. Assure them that you will work with them. Proactively find and fix any hazards that could injure employees. Practice safe behaviors yourself. Make safety part of your daily conversations with workers.
Develop and communicate a simple procedure for workers to report all injuries, illnesses, and incidents. Furthermore, hazards or safety and health concerns should be easily reported without fear of retaliation. Additionally, it is profitable to provide an option for reporting concerns anonymously. It is especially important to include near misses/close calls.
Train workers on how to identify and control hazards in the workplace. Inspect the workplace with workers for the purpose of asking them to identify any activity, piece of equipment, or materials that concern them. Also, be sure to use checklists to help identify problems.
Ask workers for ideas on improvements and follow up on their suggestions. Coupled with providing time to research solutions. Assign workers the task of choosing, implementing, and evaluating the solutions they come up with. Whenever possible, identify foreseeable emergency scenarios. Then, follow up by developing instructions on what to do in each case. Finally, meet to discuss these procedures and post them in a visible location in the workplace.
Finally, set aside a regular time to discuss safety and health issues, with the goal of identifying ways to improve and effectively implement the program.