What are some of the resources inside the workplace that will help you find information on safety and health issues?

Did you know that more than 120,000 serious accidents and incidents occurred in the workplace in Australia in 2020? According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, around 194 of these ended up as fatalities (read more here). While we do need to take the Covid-19 situation into account, these are still staggering numbers. 

However, thankfully due to better awareness, identification and control of hazards in the workplace, these numbers are decreasing every year. But, there is always more that can be done.

What is a Workplace Hazard?

Before you can identify and work toward preventing the hazards in the workplace, you have to know what you’re looking for. Hazards come in many shapes and sizes, some more severe than others. They will also vary depending on the working environment. 

Workplace hazards can be grouped into six categories:

These are hazards that should be completely removed from the workplace. They are core safety issues such as unsecured cords, worn cabling, unguarded heights, etc.

Physical hazards can cause harm without the worker coming into direct contact with them. Issues such as high noise levels, extreme temperatures, or radiation fall into this category.

Biological hazards are created by exposure to any biological agents that may result in injury or disease. These will be especially prevalent when working in healthcare industries, but they shouldn’t be ignored in any workplace. Hazards in this category include bacteria, bodily fluids, human or animal waste, insect bites or viruses (looking at you, Covid-19!).

Chemical hazards are created by the handling or exposure of chemical agents, vapours, or fire risks.

Ergonomic hazards are risks that may not cause immediate injury but can cause long-term problems. Incorrect seating or desk heights, excessive vibrations, regular heavy lifting, or similar issues are possible things to look out for here.

Working environment hazards are mostly mental health issues that may result from factors in the workplace such as stress due to work demands, harassment, and other workplace disrespect. 

How to Identify and Prevent a Hazard

Now that you know the types of hazards that may be present in the workplace, how do you identify and prevent them? It doesn’t happen with a single act — in order to protect your workplace and staff to the fullest, it’s crucial to implement and follow through with a workplace safety plan.

The first step in preventing hazards is to identify them. In order to determine the hazards, develop a plan for identification that can be implemented and followed consistently. 

Information that may already be available can help to highlight the hazards and risks associated with features in your workplace. This could include instruction and operating manuals for machinery, chemical safety data sheets (SDS), or simply reviewing warning labels and signage.

Likely, your workplace has already suffered accidents in the past. Even if these were small and didn’t result in injuries, they can provide valuable insights into the hazards present in your workplace.

Analysing prior incident reports, workers' compensation claims, and the results of analysis and reports in both your workplace and related industries can all be excellent ways of collecting information on hazards that are already known.

Collecting information on incidents when they occur will help build a profile of the types of hazards and risks present in your workplace. Reports should document the type of incident, any injuries that were suffered, the contributing hazards or risk factors, and any action that will be taken in the future to mitigate them.

Reporting reactively can only go so far in protecting the workplace. Proactive and regular assessment of the workplace, such as weekly walkthroughs, will help to flag both existing and newly developed hazards.

This is especially important in industries where management may not be regularly present in the primary workplace with the highest risk factors, e.g. construction or factory settings. The staff who experience the hazards will likely be the first to notice them, so create systems to collect and act on feedback from staff.

The Importance of Identifying Hazards

Accidents and incidents in the workplace account for hundreds of thousands of injuries and many fatalities every year. Identifying hazards is the first step in removing or mitigating risks. 

It may seem obvious, but there are important reasons to do this:

This is by and large the most important reason for identifying hazards in the workplace. It’s impossible to remove or mitigate something you’re unaware of, so you must be diligent in identifying and handling hazards properly to reduce or eliminate the risk of injury or death.

Working towards a safer working environment should be a goal of all businesses, regardless of size, industry, or legal obligation. A proactive and responsible stance on hazard identification and mitigation is the reason the statistics for work-related injuries or fatalities are getting lower and lower. 

Additionally, being a responsible employer by taking an active role in worker safety will reflect better on the company both in the market and community.

The Work Health and Safety Act for Australia makes it the legal responsibility of every employer to ensure that their team is working in the safest environment possible. Employers must legally take a proactive role in identifying, reporting, and taking steps to mitigate hazards. Non-compliance can result in stiff financial penalties for offending employers and, in the case of fatalities, possibly criminal prosecution.

Accidents invariably cause downtime in any workplace environment. Between paperwork, clean-up, and production restarts, lots of factors can cause downtime when an accident that was preventable occurs — and that’s assuming nobody was injured. Injuries that result from an accident can cause further short-term and long-term downtime in productivity. There is also the likelihood of increased running costs when hiring and training temporary replacement workers to cover team members that have time off for recovery.

While not directly related to hazard identification and prevention itself, analysis of the workplace, its processes, and the associated risks can help reveal ways that efficiency can be improved.

Remember, even with the most thorough and detailed hazard identification and prevention techniques, accidents and incidents will still occur. But, by being aware of the potential risks, you can prevent accidents and keep your team safe.

Want to learn more about hazard identification and risk elimination? Get in touch with Conserve today, and subscribe to our newsletter for regular updates and insights!

"The discipline that goes into a safety program will spill over into production and quality control. People will be more aware of safety and how they do their jobs. We believe it will work to our benefit with production and quality."

Ben Church, Kaiser Industries

As an employer, it is your responsibility to maintain a safe and healthy workplace. A safety and health management system, or safety program, can help you focus your efforts at improving your work environment. Whatever you call it, your plan describes what the people in your organization do to prevent injuries and illnesses at your workplace.

Your organization will have its own unique system, reflecting your way of doing business, the hazards of your work, and how you manage the safety and health of your employees:

• If you manage a small business in a low-risk industry, your system may simply involve listening to your employees' concerns and responding to them.
• A large business in a hazardous industry may have notebooks full of written policies and procedures and a full-time safety director.

What's most important is that your system works for your organization. It's up to you to decide how best to operate a safe and healthy workplace, and to put your plan into practice.

What makes a successful system?

A successful system will be part of your overall business operation, as important as the other things you do to succeed in business.

Successful safety and health systems have the following in place:

Take a look at your safety and health system. Some components may be strong and others may need to be strengthened. The following sections describe these key factors and give ideas about how to make them part of your program. And remember, if you operate one of many thousands of small businesses in Maine, your system can be simple and largely informal.

Use the following as a practical guide and adapt it to your needs. Because small businesses often cannot afford in-house safety and health professionals, you may need help setting up your system. You can call SafetyWorks! --- our services are free and confidential. Your workers' compensation insurance provider, your industry organization, or a private consultant may also be able to help.

I. Make a commitment

Put as much energy into your commitment to safety and health as you put into any other important part of your business. Make sure to include workplace safety and health in your business plan and integrate it into all facets of the business.

• Write a policy that emphasizes the importance you place on workplace safety and health.
• Commit the resources (time, money, personnel) needed to protect your employees.
• Begin meetings with a safety topic.
• Encourage employee participation in safety and health.
• Let employees know they will be expected to follow safe work practices if they work for your business. And follow them yourself.
• Respond to all reports of unsafe or unhealthy conditions or work practices.
• If injuries or illnesses occur, make it your business to find out why.
• Go beyond the regulations; address all hazards, whether or not they are covered by laws.

II. Involve employees

In a safe and healthy workplace, employees have a stake in the success of the program --- safety and health is everyone's responsibility. Actively encourage employee involvement if you want your program to succeed. Hold people accountable and makes sure everyone does their part.

• Establish an active workplace safety and health safety committee.
• Make daily safety inspections part of some employees' jobs.
• Keep employees informed about safety inspections, injury and illness statistics, and other safety-related issues.
• Give everyone a meaningful activity that supports safety.
• Value employee input and feedback. Employees often know more about safety problems and solutions than managers do.
• Make sure employees help review and improve the program.
• Hold employees accountable
  • Include safety and health responsibilities in job descriptions. Make following safe work practices part of performance evaluation.
  • Set safety goals and hold everyone accountable.
  • Discipline employees who behave in ways that could harm themselves or other.
  • Establish a clear system for reporting hazards, injuries, illnesses and close calls.
  • Recognize employees who contribute to keeping the workplace safe and healthy.

III. Identify and control hazards

Before you can control hazards you need to know what the hazards are. Here are some ways to identify safety and health hazards:

• Review records of accidents, injuries, illnesses, and close calls
• review OSHA logs, first aid logs, workers' compensation reports, complaints, and close calls
• look for trends or common factors in
  • kinds of injuries or illnesses
  • parts of body
  • time of day/shift
  • location
  • equipment
  • protective equipment
  • department
• Survey employees
• Review inspection reports from enforcement inspections, insurance surveys, or consultations.
• Learn the OSHA regulations that have to do with your workplace.
• Inspect your workplace for safety and health problems, current and potential. SafetyWorks! consultants can help you survey your workplace.
  • Use checklists to locate dangerous conditions.
  • Watch employees work to spot unsafe work practices.
  • Perform Job Hazard Analysis.
  • Conduct air and noise sampling where exposures exist.

Once you know the hazards, you can decide how to control them.

• Prioritize the hazards you found
  • Which are most likely to cause serious injury or illness?
  • Which can you fix immediately?
  • Do you have to make long term plans to correct some of the hazards?
• Make a plan for correcting the hazards
  • Conduct job hazard analysis to identify how best to correct the hazards
  • Find out best practices from companies in your industry
• Correct the hazards
  • Engineering controls eliminate the hazards through safe tools, facilities, and equipment. These are the best controls.
  • Administrative controls don't remove the hazards; they reduce exposure by changing the work practices. For instance, rotating workers, rest breaks, training programs.
  • Personal protective equipment puts a barrier between the employee and the hazard, using, for example, gloves or safety shoes. If you use personal protective equipment, you have to assess the hazard beforehand and train employees the right way to use the equipment.
• Evaluate the changes to make sure they have corrected the problem and not created other hazards. And periodically re-survey the work environment and work practices.

IV. Comply with regulations

Employers must identify the OSHA regulations that apply in their workplaces and comply with them. SafetyWorks! classes and consultations can help with this.

V. Train Employees

Train personnel about the hazards they may be exposed to at work and how to protect themselves. Keep records of all training. Provide:

• General safety orientation for new employees and employees starting new jobs, including company safety regulations and emergency procedures.
• Specific training on the hazards of their jobs and how to do their jobs safely. (Many OSHA standards include specific training requirements)
• Retraining
  • As required by the standards
  • When jobs change
  • When employees return from long absence
  • As needed to ensure employees know how to do their jobs safely.

VI. Support a culture of safety

Workers hold safety as a value; they actively care about themselves and others. Mutual respect is the norm.

• Establish effective two-way communication. Respond to the needs and concerns of workers.
• Make sure management goes beyond the regulations to ensure a safe workplace.
• Encourage workers to go "beyond the call of duty" to ensure a safe workplace.
• Support a work environment that fosters trust, creativity, and general well-being.
• Celebrate your success with SHARP or other recognition programs.

VII. Continually improve your system

Review your program's strengths and weaknesses. Does it accurately reflect how you want to manage safety and health?

• Use OSHA's Safety and Health Program Assessment Worksheet to find out how you're doing.
• Review annually and as needed
• Investigate accidents, injuries, illnesses and close calls as they occur.
• Conduct frequent (daily, weekly as needed) inspections of specific equipment and processes.
• Evaluate your injury and illness statistics
• Document all your safety efforts.
• Change analysis: Review new and changed processes, materials, facilities and equipment for hazards
• Ensure hazard correction systems are in place and working
• Evaluate effectiveness of training
• Listen to your staff: Do employees know the hazards of their jobs and how to work safely? Are managers enforcing safe work practices and praising safe behavior?