Mary Bauer, Compliance Assistance Specialist, OSHA
The Value of an Effective Safety and Health Program Many of the items suggested on the Safe + Sound Week promotional material doesn’t cost money. For Management Leadership, here are a few ideas:
Safe + Sound Week is a nationwide event held each August that recognizes the successes of workplace health and safety programs and offers information and ideas on how to keep America’s workers safe. The full tagline is ‘a safe workplace is sound business.’ The concept is to enlighten managers that safety is an investment that will increase the bottom line, improve employee morale and retention and make a safe company more competitive in today’s economic world! OSHA’s “$afety Pays” program can help employers assess the impact of occupational injuries and illnesses on their profitability. This program uses a company’s profit margin, the average costs of an injury or illness, and an indirect cost multiplier to project the amount of sales a company would need to cover those costs. The program is intended as a tool to raise awareness of how occupational injuries and illnesses can impact a company’s profitability, not to provide a detailed analysis of a particular company’s occupational injury and illness costs. Not every site can afford to have a risk manager or safety director. OSHA recognizes the need to simplify the Safety and Health process to make the biggest impact with the everyday challenges of a small business. Safe + Sound has taken three key takeaway points to focus on and sustain after the awareness week. They are: Management Leadership, Worker Participation, and a systematic approach to Finding and Fixing hazards.
28 SUMMER 2021
• Developing and communicating a safety and health policy statement. • Providing the resources needed to implement and operate the program. • Factoring safety and health into operational planning and decisions. • Recognizing or rewarding safety and health contributions and achievements. • Leading by example, by practicing safe behaviors and making safety part of daily conversations. For Worker Participation: • Developing the initial program design. • Reporting incidents (including near misses) so they can be investigated. • Analyzing hazards associated with routine and nonroutine jobs, tasks, and processes. • Defining and documenting safe work practices. • Conducting site inspections and incident investigations. • Training current coworkers and new hires. • Evaluating program performance and identifying ways to improve it. Finding and Fixing Hazards: • Involving workers, who often have the best understanding of the conditions that create hazards and insights into how they can be controlled. • Reviewing all available information about hazards that might be present.
