10 Keys to Accident Prevention

You already know that to prevent accidents you have to identify and eliminate workplace hazards. But if the statistics are to be believed, that’s something a lot of busy supervisors have apparently been failing to emphasize enough to protect their employees adequately.

Our sister website, Safety.BLR.com, suggests that you visualize the accident prevention process as a circle. As each hazard is identified—whether through reading OSHA standards, consulting other guidelines, or making your own observations—the circumstances must be analyzed, the problem must be diagnosed, a plan of action must be developed, and then effective corrective action must be taken.

Throughout the process you have to ask lots of questions. For example: Is it a physical hazard or a health hazard? How does it threaten my employees? How can this hazard be eliminated, or at least minimized? What specific steps do I need to take to prevent accidents and protect my workers?

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Employee Involvement: Key Words

This kind of approach can certainly help identify the hazards that could cause accidents and hurt your workers. And it can help you take action to eliminate the risks. But you can’t do accident prevention alone. You need to get your employees involved, too. Without their understanding and cooperation, nothing you do will really work in the long run to stop the accidents and injuries.

Stimulating employee involvement in accident prevention isn’t always easy, but these are the 10 key words:

1. Ownership. Give employees responsibility for planning and conducting inspections, for analyzing their own data on work hazards, and for designing safety checklists.
   
2. Leadership. Set an example. Make sure you, personally, take necessary steps to prevent accidents. That means wearing proper PPE and taking the same precautions as your workers. Be on the lookout for potential hazards and point them out to your workers.
   
3. Understanding. Emphasize that hazards put employees’ personal health and safety at risk. Understanding the “why” of safety is a strong motivator.
   
4. Commitment. Work to get commitment to the idea that safety is a number one priority from every one of your employees.
   
5. Goals. Set clear standards for workplace behavior—and enforce them.
   
6. Competence. Train employees well so that they have the information and develop the skills they need to work safely and avoid accidents.

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7. Feedback. Praise employees who identify and correct hazards or who report problems they can’t fix.
   
8. Involvement. Use every opportunity to encourage employees to play an active role in workplace safety and accident prevention. If you see a hazard, do more than just correct it. Use it as a learning experience to help workers become more alert and more sensitive to potential danger on the job.
   
9. Responsiveness. Make sure you respond promptly to identified hazards and take immediate steps to correct them.
   
10. Persistence. Remember that accident prevention is an ongoing challenge. It’s something you have to focus on every day, always improving, always setting new safety objectives, and always making steady progress toward achieving them.

Even with employee buy-in and involvement, accidents are going to happen. In tomorrow’s Advisor, we’ll look at how you can make accident investigations a key component of your accident prevention process.