Safety

Importance of Safety Program

An effective safety program is important to an organization for several reasons:

• Accidents, injured employees and lost time are direct and indirect costs to the organization. An effective safety program can decrease costs, increase productivity and improve the bottom-line.
• It is a positive message to employees that their well-being is important, creates good morale and a positive culture.

Best Practices

General best practices for all organizations, especially small organizations:

• Top management and supervisors must “walk the talk” and set the example.
• The safety message and priority needs to come from the top all the way down thru the organization and become part of the organization culture.
• The optimum time to hold weekly safety meetings is Monday morning at the first of the week so the safety message is with everyone all week.
• To increase effectiveness and relavancy of safety meetings hold them on the job site, keep them short and sweet.
• Management needs to setup a system to folowup on every accident or near miss; an AAR system works.
• Track safety religiously; publicize at all opportunities to all members of the company the safety information reports. This proves it is a priority and makes it top of the mind.
• Make safety a conscious part of the company culture.
• Self-insure for workmens compensation – If the company has the financial capacity to self-insure this should be evaluated. A self-insured company gains or losses directly from the effectiveness of its safety program, culture and experience.
• Utilize your insurance company as a resource to improve your safety program. They have experts and see what works and doesn't work in many companies.
• Educate managers that have budget or P&L responsibility about the role of safety; costs; profits and bottom-line impact.

Industry Specific Safety Best Practices

• Miners Safety best practices developed by a volunteer group of stakeholders convened by the Mining Healthy and Safety Administration

Best Practices in Large Organizations

• 'Driving Toward ‘0’ – Best Practices in Corporate Safety and Health”, The Conference Board, 2003. This research is based on an in depth survey of 68 leading companies and identifies 23 best practices. The project was funded by OSHA. Downloadable copy of the report.