Safety in the workplace is very important but can be elusive. In 2014, 4,386 people died at work in private industries. Of those deaths, 20.5% or 899 were in construction. According to estimates from the Survey of Occupational Injuries and Illnesses (SOII) conducted by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were almost three million nonfatal workplace injuries in 2014. They occurred at a rate of 3.2 cases per 100 equivalent full time workers. Most workers are concerned about their safety at work. Occupational health software can be helpful but it has to part of a bigger campaign to keep workers healthy and safe.
Make Your Employees See How Health and Safety Policy Applies to Them
Three-quarters of workers admit that it is important to them that they feel safe and secure in the workplace. What management needs to do is show your employees how health and safety software helps and impacts them and their lives. The Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA) is clear when it comes to who it thinks bears the responsibility when it comes to crafting and explaining health and safety policies and procedures. It is the responsibility of the employer to clearly communicate what the procedure is and how it needs to be implemented. That same principle applies here. You can develop the best, most advanced and forward thinking policy when it comes to keeping your employees safe and healthy but if your employees do not see the connection between your policies and their well being, nothing will happen with it.
Provide Effective Training to Your Employees
Businesses need to develop and provide effective and efficient training programs for their employees. Safety trainings need to be made mandatory for employees at all levels of the organization. To ensure all employees participate in the required training sessions on your new safety and health policies and procedures, you need to track who attends and how they do. Occupational health software can be used to track the trainings. Tracking is essential for proper compliance with OSHA rules and regulations. When you are tracking your employees’ training, you need to know who took the trainings, how they did in the trainings and who finished each training. You can use occupational health software to provide some trainings online which makes tracking them easier. Employees can complete the training on a flexible schedule because it is online. It also helps with proof of compliance.
Repetition, Repetition, Repetition
There is a reason companies like Coca Cola and Progressive show their ads all the time on TV. The more often you see a message, the more likely you are to remember it and have it change your behavior. As that is exactly what you want in your employees, you should take a page from Madison Avenue’s playbook and reinforce the messages from your training sessions with safety messages about your employee safety program with messages about safety all around the workplace. Put up posters, safety screen savers on company computers and email reminders should all be part of your campaign to promote your program.
Evaluate Your Messaging Campaign
Companies can use health and safety software to evaluate the effectiveness of your messaging campaign. Typically safety audit software is used to identify issues and problems in the workplace that can be changed and improved to make the it safer. By the same token, occupational health software can be used to see if your messages are getting through to your employees.
Get Feedback from Your Workers
You may want your employees to point out and flag any actions, incidents or behavior they think is unsafe. The problem is that 45% of employees say that they do not feel comfortable doing that, so what can you do? You need to empower your staff to speak up when they see something. Like with the American efforts against terrorism, you need to implement a “See Something, Say Something” kind of campaign so that when they observe their coworkers or managers doing something that is unsafe, they report it.
Safety at the workplace is everyone in your company’s responsibility.Developing a protocol and installing the right software is a great place to start but without proper training and communications is useless.