Learning Center

Safe Workplace Practices

The business benefits of protecting your workers

Many businesses are finding that increasing safety within operations is not only the right thing to do, it is the profitable thing to do. Among the benefits they're realizing:

• Reducing injuries and accidents prevents pain, suffering and financial stress felt by workers, their families and the community.

• A safe workplace enjoys higher morale and less employee turnover and absenteeism, and has an easier time getting new employees.

• Since uninsurable/indirect business costs run at least four times the amount of insurable costs, many unforeseen financial impacts are avoided by businesses that can avoid losses.

• Lower injury frequency and claim costs can result in lower Workers Compensation costs.

• Employees who avoid injury in the workplace tend to turn in fewer health insurance claims and miss fewer workdays.

• An active safety program can limit OSHA’s involvement with your business.

• Lower injury and accident costs reduce the cost of the product or service your business provides and help you produce at lower cost and higher profit than your competition.

Getting started

Here are some basic steps for developing an effective and profit-producing safety program of your own.

1. Write down the goals you wish your safety program to achieve. For example: No accidents after today; fewer lost workdays; reduced injury frequency, etc.

2. Issue and communicate a written safety policy to every employee.

3. Appoint a safety coordinator and hold that person responsible for safety results.

4. Make safety a responsibility of all supervisors and managers, and include safety performance of their employee groups in performance appraisals.

5. Set up a reporting procedure so that the effectiveness of your safety program is communicated to top management on a regular basis. Review the results, give guidance and support the entire program.

Once these steps are implemented, select specific areas for further safety development. Choose areas that can produce the largest cost benefits in the shortest time.

Safety areas to target

Specific safety program areas commonly include:

• Employee Selection and Placement

• Lock/Out – Tag/Out

• Effective Safety Rules

• Fire Prevention

• Hazard Communication

• Emergency Preparedness

• Safety Motivation and Promotion

• Accident Investigation

• Safety Committees

• Employee Return to Work

• Personal Protective Equipment

• Job Site Safety Inspections

• Back Injury Prevention

• Bloodborne Pathogens

• Repetitive Motion Injury Prevention

• Confined Space Entry

• Driver Safety Programs

• Establishing Subcontractor Liability Controls

The recommendations listed here follow generally accepted safety standards. Compliance with these recommendations does not guarantee that you will be in conformance with any building code, or federal, state or local regulations regarding safety or fire. Compliance does not ensure the absolute safety of you, your operations or place of business.