How to Jumpstart Your Safety Program

Safety is more than just signs and hard hats. Safety programs can help influence work habits, provide a cultural change, and ultimately keep workers safe at work and at home. But where do you begin creating a safety program? With OSHA’s SAFE + Sound week, STAC has helped prepare some simple steps to help you jumpstart your safety program.
 
Make Safety a Core Value
The best way to begin your safety program is by establishing safety as a company-wide value. Encourage employees to begin thinking and speaking about safety while affirming that you are all in charge of keeping each other safe in the workplace. This value must include all employees from your president down to your first day intern. When everyone begins thinking about safety, a cultural change can occur.
 
Create a Reporting System
Once you have established safety for your employees you need a way to report issues they find. Create a report or find a form that allows employees to document incidents and injuries, record near misses, or identify potential safety hazards on the job. Be sure to encourage employees when filling out these forms so you can identify ongoing hazards that are seen on a regular basis and find ways to mitigate them in the future.

With STAC, we can help record incidents with the Add Incident feature. This allows you to record on the job injuries and illnesses and download them as an OSHA 301 form for your reports.
 
Provide Orientation
 In order to promote safety, you must make it a priority from the beginning. Create a new hire orientation that gives insight to the potential dangers seen on a regular basis and how to identify hazards. Review proper PPE requirements and provide them with the gear prior to going to the job. During this orientation be sure to iterate that all employees are responsible for safety and they have the right to speak up if they see a potential safety hazard.

Once the orientation has been implemented, look to add additional trainings for seasoned employees to continue promoting safety and proper working habits.
 
Conduct Inspections
Create a jobsite inspection outline and review this in the field on a routine basis. Check for hazards and review findings with your employees on-site so they are aware of the dangers and can prevent them in the future.

Inspections can also be created for equipment being used in the field. Train employees to use these inspections before they operate the equipment to make sure the equipment is in good working condition.
 
Review Safety Regularly
Keep safety in the minds of your employees. Use toolbox talks, safety stand-downs, and job hazard analysis forms on a regular basis to review and identify hazards that are specific to work your employees are conducting. Make these interactive with questions and scenarios to engage your workers and make them think about their tasks and using proper techniques.
 
Document Training
Record all training and safety records in an organized manner. Make sure these documents can be easily reached if employees or trainings come into question.

​STAC can help provide on-demand access to employee records keeping you organized and compliant. Our automated reports can help you review this information and find employees who have expiring training to make sure their certifications are never behind.
 
Continue Improving
Until there are zero accidents across all jobsites, continue improving your program to make it the best it can be. Collect feedback from your employees when implementing changes to know what works best. Set goals for your organization and strive to make the changes happen. Continue to encourage safe habits both on the job and at home. When safety is part of the company culture, everyone benefits from the rewards.