Injury Prevention - The Safety & Numbers Blog, presented by IAS

Work Hazard Analysis

Identifying Workplace Hazards is an integral component of an effective work safety program. As a required element of OSHA VPP Program participation, following an organized hazard assessment process can be the backbone of a company’s safety policy. Identifying hazards provides the ability to mitigate risk and evaluate safety effectiveness.

The work hazard assessment process consists of five main components:

Identify Hazardous Condition
Hazards that can lead to injury or illness range from physical injury risk to chemicals, temperature, radiation, noise, and electrical. Employees need to be involved in hazard analysis from the beginning to assist with acceptance and recognition of benefit.
Determine Root Cause
Potential root causes can include lack of knowledge, lack of physical ability, improper training, or unidentified hazards. Managers should reassess hazards when new equipment is installed or new work processes developed.
Eliminate Hazards
Mitigate risks via controls based on level of injury risk, frequency of exposure, and potential harm. Evaluate the level of overall risk to prioritize controls and implement. Identify PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) such as gloves, safety glasses, etc.
Control Measures
Risk management efforts can include engineering controls to manage exposure, layout, and access; administrative controls to to manage employees, tasks, and training; and work practices for safety, hygiene, and work area cleanliness.
Evaluation of Effectiveness
Hazard assessment programs should be evealuated on injury prevention effectiveness. Evaluation tactics include routine inspections; documentation for injury reports and near misses; requesting, researching and responding to employee feedback.

Source: Marine Corp Community Services

Initiating a Work Hazard Analysis

When commencing hazard assessment, plan to document responsible team members, tasks, and step sequence for processes with injury risk. A Hazard Assessment checklist similar to this sample provided by the California Department of Industrial Relations may be helpful. Next, determine and document preventative measures, equipment, and Personal Protective Equipment, and train employees accordingly. Finally, consider residual risk – any risk that remains after controls have been implemented – for future evaluation and improvement.

Creating Safety Incentives

Incentivizing safety is a controversial topic for management professionals. While the results of incentive programs are generally effective, it is important to create safety incentives that provide the proper focus. The method, motivational factors, and objectives must be properly structured to avoid undermining the desired effect. In fact, businesses that create safety incentives which discourage employees from reporting injuries are at risk of OSHA violations. Fear not, safety professionals, by following a few guidelines you can create incentives that build safety culture across the organization.

Safety Incentive Guidelines

Make sure you have a safety program in place before creating incentives. Use incentives to enhance the organizational buy-in of a safety program.
Plan incentives around the objectives you set for the program. Reiterate focus and goals at every opportunity. Reward and promote performance.
Avoid incentives that may lead employees to fear the consequences of reporting incidents. Remember that incentives are to promote safety, not just meet goals.
Capitalize on data management technology trends to track and reward long term safety program metrics as well as short term or more focused objectives.

Safety Incentive Program Ideas

Safety Slogans: Many incentive programs center around the creation of slogans submitted by members of the organization. The advantage of slogan incentives lies in culture building and organizational involvement.
Safety Quiz: These programs help to ensure employees understand shifting safety initiatives and can also test employee response to real world applications.
Housekeeping: The cleanliness and organization of work areas often has a direct effect on safety and can be easily incentivized.

Safety incentives can be a means of establishing a sustainable safety culture while reducing the burden on employees. Programs such as number of days without injury or lost time can be effective, but should be structured carefully to ensure employees report injuries. The most effective programs are part of a larger injury risk management safety program, providing support in a way that employees want to participate in.

Making the Case for Work Injury Prevention [INFOGRAPHIC]

The costs of workers’ compensation and other work injury expenses are significant and difficult to predict. To manage this risk, businesses should build safety culture by implementing work injury prevention programs and providing incentives to employees that promote safety across the organization. For an overview on how to make the case for work safety policy, review our Work Injury Prevention Infographic.

The Cost of Work Injuries: Direct, Indirect, and Hidden

A worker injury comes packaged with costs far beyond worker’s compensation claims and potential litigation expenses. Direct costs are significant; In 2009, worker’s compensation benefits paid totaled $58 billion, a 150% increase from only 6 years prior. Yet, considering direct costs alone when factoring a return on safety investment or justifying safety and health initiatives is painfully incomplete. Companies that have dealt with even minor worker injuries have experienced the hidden costs and indirect bottom line factors that can lead to catastrophic side effects or unanticipated benefits. Studies have shown that work injury prevention programs are effective both on a bureaucratic and a business level. Considering the complete picture of a work injury can be the most effective motivator for investing in safety risk management programs.

Hidden Costs of Work Injuries

The worst case scenario for a work injury, a death or debilitating injury, carries the most hidden costs for a business organization. Large workers’ comp claims hike up premiums and can even lead to inability to change or acquire insurance. From here, consider the effect on the co-worker when an employee suffers an injury on the job. In the worst case, counseling may be required for co-workers, as the work facility becomes a haunting reminder of the incident. Lack of sensitivity to this scenario can lead to worker absenteeism and forge foundational cracks in the management-employee bond. Injuries don’t have to be major to carry hidden costs, however. Companies with a reputation for aloofness to safety, experience a large number of worker injuries, or fail to support national and economic safety initiatives can have a hard time retaining and hiring employee at competitive salary levels.

Indirect Costs of Work Injuries

The indirect costs of a work injury are more easily foreseeable but still difficult to factor in monetary terms. It is important to realize their reach to fully anticipate the event of a work injury, even if the variability of the costs makes them difficult to forecast. Indirect costs can include training and compensating replacement workers, damaged property, production delays, administrative expense, and morale and reputation factors. These side effects and reactionary costs can add up to total up to 20 times the direct costs and are usually considered as a multiple factor in projections.

Indirect Safety Benefit & Opportunity Cost

Remember the hidden costs of a work injury? Hidden benefits are just as closely tied to safety initiatives. Safety programs are beneficial for the business, the worker, and the economy as a whole. A 2001 Liberty Mutual report on Safety Investment ROI shows that 61% of executives see a 3-1 return for safety investments, likely due to improved morale, productivity, industry reputation, community support, and HR advantages. Safety can be a core business value and produce competitive advantage as a positive safety reputation becomes recognized by customers, vendors, and staff. It doesn’t have to be though. An attentive and effective safety program can economically support strategies ranging from quality to customer service, while still producing indirect benefit. Ignoring this agenda for lower return investments is often an opportunity cost for businesses.

When a complete picture of work injuries and safety benefit is considered, it’s easier to see the wisdom in investing in injury prevention and championing proactive safety programs.

Creating Safety Culture as a Brand

Safety culture compared to safety policy is similar to the difference between creating a brand and pitching a service. Putting in place a safety and health program can and will be effective, but motivational factors can seem like a burden to managers and employees.

Creating safety culture will align executive initiatives with employee investment and organizational commitment to create value across operational activities. As a result, effective safety culture not only reduces hazards, injuries, and related costs, it can also provide reputation advantages that improve employee recruiting, generate sales opportunities, and build morale-based quality and efficiency.

Core Elements of Safety Culture

Culture is a small word with a large connotation. Just how to implement culture is a concept that is a challenge to grasp when managing business objectives. The first step in implementing safety culture is to understand and build upon cultural principles.

Commit to Safety as a Value

Management staff as a rule is subject to shifting priorities and objectives. To build culture, safety should be considered as a value throughout the decision making process: considering new initiatives, managing day to day activities, reviewing performance, and everywhere in between. As employees hear safety consistently discussed as a value, they will understand it is not a shifting objective and more actively support initiatives.

Employee Involvement in Decision Making

Culture is the driving force for decision making in business, from leadership to management, operational employees, sales and support staff. Well known cultural values include quality, service, and efficiency. As values effect each member of an organization on a continual basis, each employee should be involved in planning cultural systems that affect them. By providing employees with objectives and focus areas, management will understand key factors and produce safety systems that employees support.

Cross-Departmental Investment

Values such as quality, service, and efficiency are often driven by incentives across the organization, from executives to managers and staff. Safety as a value can be rewarded in the same way. Safety culture should encourage communication across departments, reward performance at all levels, and include cross departmental activities.

To Support Culture, Create Systems

Once you begin to embrace safety as a culture, you will soon identify the need to create systems for consistency, management, and performance review. Effective systems will build trust and focus on correcting unsafe practices, generally improving the environment for safety discussions. Systems will also provide management with a process for hazard identification, injury prevention training, incident reporting, and continuing improvement.

The importance of safety to businesses of all sizes is proven to reduce work injuries and related costs, but implementing safety initiatives at optimal benefit is not always easy. Integrating safety as a cultural value will build motivation across the organization and encourage cooperative discussion. For more on safety culture, visit OSHA.gov.

SHARP Program Emphasizes Work Injury Prevention in the Trucking Industry

In Washington and across the country, the SHARP program is helping to bring awareness to trucking industry work injury risks, via the TIRES (Trucking Injury Reduction Emphasis) initiative. SHARP (Safety & Health Assessment and Research for Prevention) is an established Washington State Department of Labor & Industries program focused on research and response to occupational safety and health issues across industries and disciplines.

With additional support from NIOSH, the TIRES program maintains a website and social media presence, provides training materials and reports, and conducts interviews and surveys with members of management and labor teams in industry.

The goal of the TIRES project is to reduce the incidence of:

Non-traumatic musculoskeletal disorders of the neck, back and upper extremity.

Slips, trips and falls.

Injuries from getting struck by or against an object.

These conditions comprise 71% of the industry’s workers’ compensation claims, costs and lost workdays.

The trucking work injury prevention resources available at the TIRES website is a smorgasbord for safety professionals and industry members across the country. The Washington Department of Labor & Industries also conveniently ties together reports and publications in an encyclopedia-like layout that provides everything you need to develop safety programs, research risk areas, and gather case studies for reporting.

To stay up to date, follow @TruckSafe on Twitter or visit the TIRES blog. And as always, upgrade your trucking fall protection with a trucker ladder or flatbed work platform from Innovative Access Solutions.