Making the Most of a Safety Department of One: Part 2

Fran Sehn is the Assistant Vice President, Casualty Risk Control Services, for Willis of Pennsylvania, Inc. His consulting work also includes providing safety audits, hazard assessments and safety training for a variety of manufacturing, commercial and industrial clients.

Yesterday, he offered a number of tips on having world-class safety even if you’re the only safety professional in your organization. Today, he gives some more advice.

Understand what safety program resources are available to you. The resources for safety are numerous: Programs are available on line, from insurers, from consultants and from vendors. The programs are often boilerplate but the more dynamic documents will be effective in providing the direction for safety improvement.

Safety committees can be formed to extend your reach. The committee can be an extension of the safety professional. This committee can help with hazard identification, incident investigation, and more. The makeup of the committee may be determined by several factors, but it should include a balance of both shop floor and management representatives. The committee must meet regularly, schedule inspections, be trained in the committee requirements, and participate in incident investigations.

---

Checklists keep your workplace and your workers safe. See how with the award-winning Safety Audit Checklists program from BLR. New 2013 Edition includes GHS changes! Learn More.

---

Know what to do if an incident/accident happens. Sehn notes that “the policy or procedure for incidents and accidents . . . is important to minimize additional problems and issues.” The investigation format should be a component of an overall Crisis Management Plan. If you don’t have this, you’re missing a serious opportunity to influence safety in the aftermath of a problem. Training/updating and practice are critical for the plan to work in the event of an incident.

Know when to seek outside assistance. There are several reasons to seek out seek outside assistance, such as when you are over your head, do not have the expertise (i.e. for industrial hygiene sampling, specialized training, new standards, etc.), or you need to define the help needed. There are numerous sources of help including insurance risk control departments, OSHA consultations, insurance brokers, independent consultants, vendors/suppliers of equipment and safety equipment and supplies, safety organizations and community resources, and the internet.

By following some of these simple guidelines, even a safety department of one can be an effective force to improve safety across the organization.

---

Examine the best-selling Safety Audit Checklists program for 30 days at no cost —not even for return shipping. Try out the new 2013 Edition including GHS changes! Click Here.

---

Check This Out!

Here’s another piece of advice about successfully managing safety. Use checklists!

BLR’s Safety Audit Checklists provides safety and health checklists on more than 50 essential workplace topics to help identify safety requirements and zero in on compliance problems and solutions.

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.