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Here are some strategies for making sure that your workers always remember that they’re only as good as their last safely completed task.
Four Ways to Keep Workers in the Game
In order to keep workers in the safety game, they have to always have a goal. Here are some ways to set safety goals in a program that appears to be working well and successfully keeps workers safe.
Take your safety program to the next level. How many days have you gone without a lost-time accident? That number may be impressive—but how many days have you gone without a recordable accident, property-damage incident, or a near miss? Don’t rest on your laurels, and don’t let workers rest on theirs. If you’ve met one goal, celebrate! Then, set a new goal before workers begin to think that there’s no more work to do and that they can relax.
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Manage change with care. If you’re changing or upgrading your processes and procedures, make sure to keep workers in the loop. Workers who think they know how to do a job safely may, if they’re not paying close attention, miss changes. If they keep doing things the old way, they could cause problems for themselves and for their coworkers. So, when you’re making improvements in how you do things, make sure you keep lines of communication open with your workers and that you let them know their old ways of doing things won’t work anymore.
Maintain an awareness of variables. A job that’s safe in December might end in a case of heat illness in July; a job that’s no problem outdoors could turn toxic indoors, where hazardous vapors can accumulate. Make sure that workers pay attention not only to the parts of a job task that don’t change but also to the hazards of things that do change depending on location, season, staffing, and other variable factors. If tasks are different from how workers learned them or from when they were last performed, workers may need to stop and do a new hazard evaluation.
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Find a new angle. How’s your training program? Are you still running everybody through the same program that worked so well when it was first implemented? If workers aren’t getting anything new out of your training program, they may decide they “know it all already” and let their guard down. Make sure your training program is up to date with respect to your facility, your personnel, and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s regulations and current technology, and that it highlights any changes for workers. The new angle that catches workers’ interest and shows them that they don’t already know everything there is to know is what might keep them focused and safe.
Need more tips on taking your safety program to the next level? The resources at Safety.BLR.com® can help you make sure you’re always bringing your “A” game.