How do you set your safety goals? How do you decide on the focus of your safety programs?
The truth is, the ways of constructing your safety initiatives are as many and varied as the safety goals those initiatives can pursue. The trick isn’t finding a safety initiative, but finding one that’s effective for your EHS program and the goals you’re trying to accomplish.
Here’s a list of safety initiatives your EHS team should implement, along with ideas to apply them to your own program.
Tackle OSHA’s Top Ten
Looking to make your safety initiatives more ambitious? Why not tackle OSHA’s top 10 most cited standards:
- Fall protection, construction
- Hazard communication, general industry
- Scaffolding general requirements, construction
- Respiratory protection, general industry
- Control of hazardous energy (lockout/tagout), general industry
- Ladders, construction
- Powered industrial trucks, general industry
- Fall protection, training requirements
- Machinery and machine guarding, general requirements
- Eye and face protection
This list is a fantastic place to build your safety initiatives, even if you’re not in the specific industry named on the list. Fall protection, for example, is an important safety issue even outside of construction.
Recognize Safe Behavior
Recognizing safe behavior should be part of your safety program already, but if it isn’t, now is the time to incorporate it into your safety initiatives.
Motivating employees for safety is critical to getting employees engaged in safety. But in order to do that, they need to have a stake in the program itself. This is why an initiative to recognize safe behavior is so helpful.
It doesn’t need to be a grand gesture. A consistent shout-out during a safety meeting to an employee who went above and beyond shows that you’re paying attention, along with one-on-one praise when you see an employee doing something right.
Start a Safety Meeting Program
On the note of safety meetings, regular safety meetings are one of the best ways to periodically touch base on safety goals, refresh employees on key safety information, and address new safety topics.
So, if you don’t have a safety meeting program, now is the time to start one.
Keep in mind that this isn’t limited to check-ins with management. It could be regular meetings between employee safety representatives, the EHS team, and management. It could be a chance to boost employee morale and your overall safety culture. It could be a chance to reward great performance on the job. Don’t let the concept of a boring presentation hold you back.
Putting Your List of Safety Initiatives in Action
This list of safety initiatives is just the starting point for your EHS program. Until your initiatives transition from a list of ideas into tangible action, they won’t do your EHS team any good.
When it’s time to put safety in motion, our safety software can help, providing your team with all the tools they need to make observations, learn from data, and generate real results for your workforce.
