Safety Tips for the Workplace

7 Ways to Improve Workplace Safety

By Tim Clark - March 23, 2021

69% of Workplace Injuries are Preventable — MSDs result in 34% of Lost Work Days

Safety in the workplace should be a concern and top priority for every industry—not only transportation, manufacturing, and construction but also professional, commercial and retail.

We wanted to provide you with 7 Safety Tips for the Workplace to help ensure the safety and well-being of all your employees.

The best news? There are numerous benefits to your bottom line when you plan, implement and follow-up on safety protocols. The following tips will help your business build an effective safety culture: 

1. Train Employees Well - Document all work procedures, walk every new employee through the workplace to help them visually learn and understand, explain all safety policies and procedures (and back up with documentation they must sign), gain a commitment from leadership and management to constantly monitor and work to improve safety, train all your workers again when new processes or products are introduced.
2. Create a Culture of Safety - During regular reviews, reward employees for safe behavior, for safety improvement suggestions, and for pointing out hazards or issues; define responsibilities at each level and within each department and hold people accountable. Focus on prevention and not just incident documentation after-the-fact.
3. Hold Regular Meetings on Workplace Safety - Go over safety accountabilities and responsibilities on a regular basis, create safety checklists and review the checklists weekly or even daily, revise and update checklists for all new procedures and products, highlight people in your meetings with the suggestions they have made or issues they discovered during meetings, and make sure safety is part of every business process discussion.
4. Show Don’t Tell - Post all appropriate warning labels and signs throughout your facility—including images and different languages; Allow access to safety information, to designs and equipment plans and manuals; provide access to safety protocols online through employee web portals or sites. Label every piece of equipment and tool, as needed, in your facility with use instructions and precautions.
5. Ergonomics - Make sure there are priorities for healthy movement in place; Take a look at how your people are working - posture is always important, people should stretch before any physical activity, taking breaks during their day should be required, and make sure well-designed equipment and furniture is available. Taking advantage of remote ergonomic support services ensures employee incidents are prevented before they happen (without spending money on visits to all your locations.) These type of support services can assess worker performance, educate employees on how to perform their jobs more efficiently and safely, as well as help design fitness, stretching, and wellness programs to prevent workplace injuries.
6. Buy, Inspect, Maintain and Clean - Having the right equipment and tools for every job is key. Keep the workplace clean at all times - tools, boxes, spills and clutter all contribute to workplace incidents; while expensive, regular inspections and routine maintenance costs companies far less in the long run as will any lost time or productivity during those maintenance periods. Allow employees to be able to easily report equipment issues. Establish accountability at all levels for equipment reliability.
7. Implement Virtual Injury & Telehealth Triage with Occupational Clinicians - Provide occupational medicine clinicians remotely by utilizing telehealth kiosks to triage incidents which can eliminate missed work time from transit to and from clinics or emergency rooms. Having access to remote industrial medical pros, who have robust knowledge of OSHA first aid, provides 24/7 guidance without requiring an onsite professional at every location. This also helps reduce recordables for minor incidents that truly do not require an ER visit. 

Interested in finding out how you can more implement a virtual injury prevention platform in your company? Reach out to Health Roster today to learn how we help with remote injury prevention, virtual ergonomic evaluations, and telehealth injury triage so that you can affordably augment your safety team:  

Benefits of a Workplace Safety Program

Having healthy, safe, and happy workers is a huge benefit to every company. But there are additional reasons to implement improved safety protocols help your business be more efficient and even profitable. 

• Higher Employee Morale - Healthier workers will have a higher morale but they will also see your company doing everything you can to protect them and keep the safe. When they know you care, they will be eager to improve and have greater loyalty and pride in their work.
• Healthy Employees - As human performance is improved and injuries are prevented, you're going to have fewer sick days and days away due to injury.
• Boosted Productivity & Profits - When you spend a little, you can gain a lot. Prioritizing safety and providing the right tools and equipment means greater productivity and efficiency, with fewer days of lost work or time and money spent on finding and training replacements. 
• Improved Image - A company with a safety focus can shout this from the rooftop. You'll be able to demonstrate to customers and partners that you care about your workers and have their safety and health in mind at all times. 
• Better Talent - By showing potential new hires that you focus on safety and not just output, you'll be able to attract and keep the best and brightest on your team.
• Fewer Scheduling Issues- When injuries, aches and pains, and illness keep workers away, you have disruptions in schedules and decreased output. But focusing on safety and wellness, you avoid the scheduling problems that can plague many businesses.

What is the Return on Investment for an Injury Prevention Program? Check out the ROI of Workplace Injury Prevention: