Your safety onboarding program says a lot about your organization and the importance it gives to safety. Make sure your new hires are getting the right message.
Since nobody wants to overwhelm new employees on their first day, some safety issues have to wait for Day 2 and beyond.
During that time, someone—either the new employee’s supervisor or an experienced employee appointed by the supervisor—has to:
- Reinforce the message about the organization’s commitment to safety
- Explain your accident-prevention programs
- Talk about hazard-reporting procedures and the need to report hazards spotted anywhere in the facility, not just the employee’s own work area
- Discuss PPE selection, inspection and use requirements
- Talk about safety signage and other information that helps keep workers safe
- Discuss in more detail safety policies, rules, and procedures related to the new worker’s job
- Preview upcoming training and talk about training schedules
- And, of course, encourage and answer any questions new hires have about their safety on the job
Checklists keep your workplace and your workers safe. See how with the award-winning Safety Audit Checklists program from BLR. Try it at no cost and no risk. Get the full story.
What Message Are New Hires Getting?
Your safety orientation program and the importance you give to safety generally says a lot about the importance of safety in your workplace. And remember, even if they don’t say so, the majority of new employees are deeply concerned about their safety on the job.
Yesterday, we cited a study from the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, which reported that 85 percent of American workers rank job safety as a number one priority.
Consider the ways you show new hires how important safety is in your workplace. For example:
- Does top management play a visible role in workplace safety, supporting and facilitating safety programs and initiatives?
- Do you integrate safe work practices with other job expectations?
- Is safety performance evaluated as part of an employee’s overall job performance?
- Do you promote an employee-driven safety culture that listens to and acts on employees’ safety suggestions and concerns?
- Do you have an active and empowered safety committee?
- Do you maintain a clean and orderly workplace and create a comfortable environment in which for employees to work?
- Do you enforce safety rules consistently?
Examine the best-selling Safety Audit Checklists program for 30 days at no cost … not even for return shipping. Get the details.
Ready-Made Checklists
To show how important safety is your workplace, provide supervisors and their new hires with safety checklists to guide and enhance the orientation process—and make onboarding easier and more effective.
BLR’s Safety Audit Checklists provides safety and health checklists on more than 50 essential workplace topics to help you zero in on just the right content for individual safety orientations.
Each Safety Audit Checklists section contains:
- A review of applicable OSHA standards
- Safety management tips
- Training requirements
- At least one comprehensive safety checklist
Many sections also contain a compliance checklist, which highlights key provisions of OSHA standard. All checklists can be copied and circulated to supervisors and posted for employees.
All told, this best-selling program provides you with more than 300 separate safety checklists keyed to three main criteria:
- OSHA compliance checklists, built right from the government standards in such key areas as HazCom, lockout/tagout, electrical safety, and many more.
- “Plaintiff attorney” checklists, built around those non-OSHA issues that often attract lawsuits.
- Safety management checklists that monitor the administrative procedures you need to have for topics such as OSHA 300 Log maintenance, training program scheduling and recording, and OSHA-required employee notifications.
Make as many copies as you need for all your supervisors and managers, and distribute. What’s more, the entire program is updated annually. And the cost averages only about $1 per checklist.
If this method of ensuring a safer, more OSHA-compliant workplace interests you, we’ll be happy to make Safety Audit Checklists available for a no-cost, no-obligation, 30-day evaluation in your office. Just let us know, and we’ll be pleased to arrange it.