By Ruth Kiefer, ARM Loss Control Manager
Just this year, safety professionals from all over the country were asked by EHS Today “In what area would you most like to see an improvement in your safety program?” Listed below are the top ten answers professionals gave to this question. I’ve added a loss control view after each identified issue.
- Employee Engagement – how to get the employees more involved: You can implement team safety programs, safety committees, or other things to get your employees interested in safety. – We have some suggestions, just ask us on our next visit.
- Management Support – Top down safety is the best management support any safety person could get. It helps with quality, production, and safety.
- Bigger Budget – we can’t help you there, but we may offer money saving tips or tricks to improve safety efforts.
- Focus on Leading Indicators – This can be achieved by reviewing your loss history with your Loss Control Consultant. This identifies trends and indicators of your worker injuries.
- More Training or Better Training – Take advantage of our new online safety videos – they cover a huge array of topics. You can always ask your Loss Control Consultant for direction in selecting the right video.
- Near-Miss Reporting and documentation – there are ways to collect and review this data. It’s a leading indicator for future injuries and identifies a potential high hazard area that may need further study.
- Focus on Wellness/Heathy lifestyles – unfortunately we are an aging workforce and cannot do all the superhero things we used to do, this may require implementing two man lifts to move product, re-designing a work station to improve material movement flow, or implementing job rotation or other brakes. If you have an area of concern, please ask your LC consultant for guidance to improve the work environment.
- Stronger Safety Culture – if you want to up your safety culture and implement a safety handbook we have sample programs for that. Again, just ask your Loss Control Consultant for the program.
- Lockout Tagout – This program should be updated every time you add a piece of equipment or change a process. In addition, the program needs to be reviewed annually to ensure there are no changes. Your employees that use the program should be re-trained annually to ensure that they are following the lockout tagout instructions. You can easily document this in your program on an annual basis.
- Ergonomics – If you find that ergonomics is a trouble spot, please contact your Loss Control Consultant for an ergonomic study. We’d be more than happy to come out and take a look at your process and give you suggestions on improving the work flow or redesign of the work station to improve production and safety.
Safety is a team effort, from top management down to your employees. As you can see from the industry list above, that your Loss Control Representative is a valuable resource that you can use to assist you in beefing up your existing safety programs. For more information contact your Loss Control Consultant.
