Category: Special Topics in Safety Management
Safety is a process, and as such, needs to be managed. This section offers resources to create a viable safety program, sell it to senior management, train supervisors and employees in using it, and then track and report your progress. Look also for ways to advance your own skills in these areas, both for your current job, and those that follow.
Free Special Report: 50 Tips for More Effective Safety Training
Noise monitoring is a vital part of your hearing conservation program. It can help you determine whether workers could be exposed at or above the action level; select workers for inclusion in a hearing conservation program; and enable the selection of appropriate hearing protection devices. According to OSHA’s occupational noise standard (1910.95), area monitoring or […]
Is the obesity epidemic hurting your workplace? Are your workers less productive than they could be because they suffer from poorly controlled Type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, or obstructive sleep apnea? Are your healthcare costs soaring out of control?
For a number of years, OSHA has been making the business case for safety, pointing out that employers can save $4 to $6 for every dollar invested. A similar message is emerging regarding health. A 2014 RAND Corporation study of 7 years of PepsiCo data found that efforts to help employees manage chronic illnesses saved […]
An effective discipline policy can help your workers remain aware of, and in compliance with, workplace safety rules. However, if your workplace discipline policy is badly designed or inconsistently applied, you could put yourself in a bind with workers and regulators.
Few people enjoy disciplining employees. It’s a distasteful task. But correctly applied discipline is in the best interest of both the employee and employer, and all employees who are responsible for discipline should know how and when to discipline an employee who has violated a safety rule.
Do you ever feel as if you’re at odds with your supervisors and workers over safety? Like you’re working at cross purposes, in an environment where safety is seen as the enemy of production? What if there were a way to bring workers onto your team and get everybody working together to enhance workplace safety? […]
Maybe you have to have a safety committee because state law requires you to. Maybe you thought it was a good idea when you started it, but it has never worked out like you hoped. Maybe you poured your efforts into establishing a safety committee, but workers never seemed to trust it fully. What’s keeping […]
Yesterday, we looked at the four categories of employers that OSHA will hold responsible for safety on a multiemployer worksite. Today, we will look in detail at the responsibilities of “controlling employers,” who carry a higher compliance burden than other employers at the site.
How many employers have a presence on your worksite? Do you have two or three contractors renovating your office space, another contractor running your on-site cafeteria, some consultants evaluating your production unit, a medical group doing a wellness screening on-site, and a crew of temporary employees in the warehouse? All of those workers represent different […]
In the first century B.C., the Roman naturalist Pliny the Elder wrote about miners using pig bladders to try to protect themselves from hazardous breathing air in the mines. We’ve made some refinements since Pliny’s day—to the point of recognizing that the respirator itself can, under some conditions, be hazardous.