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Just 10 minutes a week can improve your safety culture
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- ENGAGE
Asking team members about hazards and their feedback about safety is a great way to learn about the things that can hurt or sicken our teams and a great way to build engagement and participation in safety. - PREVENT
Based on our knowledge of hazards, we can check to ensure we have preventative measures in place to prevent injuries and exposures. These may be eliminating a hazard (such as moving a tripping hazard or drying a wet floor), substituting a hazard (such as substituting a less dangerous chemical for another), engineering-out the hazard (such as implementing a barrier between the hazard and team or ventilating the area), administrating-out the hazard (such as limiting exposure time to cold weather or heat), or implementing PPE (such as an N95, gloves, or other). Some hazards have distinct regulations in federal laws (Code of Federal Regulations (29 CFR 1910) and others are national standards (CDC/NIOSH) while others are best practices. HR Safety is always available to help. - COMMUNICATE
Knowing the preventative measures for each hazard, these are best communicated on a consistent and recurring basis to remind and reinforce the expectations. For example, if a dolly is used to move heavy loads, this can be reminded during safety briefings, bulletins, emails, and other means. - VALIDATE
With the preventative measures implemented and reinforced, these safe work practices and safe work conditions can be validated. Safe work conditions can be validated with inspections (Is the floor clear of tripping and slipping hazards? Is PPE available?), while safe work practices can be validated with observations (Is the PPE being used properly? Is the dolly being used to move the heavy load?) and near-miss reports can be used to report potential incidents. - INVESTIGATE
For each incident, an investigation determines how and why it happened and what we can do to prevent it from occurring again. For example, if there was a fall, were there any slipping or tripping hazards? If there was a cut, were gloves used? What can we do to remove these hazards or prevent incidents? 10 MINUTES A WEEK! If each team member takes 10 minutes a week for safety, we can make a huge difference. This may be reporting a hazard or making a recommendation on a necessary hazard control. This may be communicating a safety expectation such as using PPE or following a particular process. This may be doing a quick inspection or observation to check for safety. There are many ways to help improve safety and each team member’s input is hugely valuable.
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