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Workplace health and safety hazards can be costly (to lives and the bottom line), but the good news is that they are largely preventable if you take the right precautions.
You don’t need to work surrounded by combustible materials to face serious health and safety risks, but the recent mine explosion in West Virginia, which killed nearly 30 workers, has called regulatory attention to that extreme end of the workplace hazard spectrum. Whether it’s a failure to protect your workers against carbon monoxide, the silent killer, or a sleep-deprived employee getting into a fatal car accident on the drive to work, every job comes with potential hazards.
Common workplace health and safety hazards include: communicable disease, transportation accidents, workplace violence, slipping and falling, toxic events, particularly chemical and gas exposure, getting struck by objects, electrocution or explosion, repetitive motion and ergonomic injuries, and hearing loss. Although some hazards are less likely to happen in some work spaces than others, it’s important to assess which hazards are most damaging to your business and your employees. Some may disrupt your continuity more than others, some may pose more serious threats to employee welfare, and still others will result in the most time lost or be the most costly. What all these setbacks have in common is that thorough planning can forestall many of them.
While they aren’t usually budget-breakers, many precautions against hazards obviously have a higher initial cost, but as the old saying goes, “It’s better to be safe than sorry.”
How to Avoid Common Workplace Health and Safety Hazards:
Maintaining Continuity
“Things that affect large portions of the [employee] population really affect small- and medium-sized businesses more than large businesses,” says Al Berman, executive director of DRII, The Institute for Continuity Management, a New York City-based organization that certifies businesses in contingency planning.
The most prominent hazard in this category is communicable diseases such as colds and the flu, and the reason they can knock out such large portions of your workforce depends partly on our society’s working culture. “We don’t discourage people from coming to work when they’re ill,” Berman says, “there is almost an encouragement [to come in] because we limit the number of sick days” employees have.
Aside from giving employees more flexible sick leave, small businesses can also prepare for epidemics by testing whether employees have the infrastructure to work remotely if they are ambulatory but contagious. This can include ensuring that employees have access to VoIP and work e-mail accounts from home, though this won’t work in fields such as manufacturing where employees need to be on site to accomplish their jobs.
Finally, Berman suggests that it’s important to cross train employees “so that no one person becomes critical to your operation.” These types of preparations can cost employers some additional effort and money but Berman echoes Brown when he advises that, “it behooves employers to look at the long term on these things rather than the short term.”
How to Avoid Common Workplace Health and Safety Hazards:
Be Prepared
There are two prominent types of general preparation employers can take against health and safety hazards in the workplace: job hazard analysis and risk mapping. These approaches share an element of stepping back and examining your procedures and facilities with new eyes unclouded by routine and alert to potential danger.
Job hazard analysis is “when you look at how a job is done and what sorts of equipment people are interacting with. These are not real mysteries, they tend to be things that you can look at very objectively and see where your protection and prevention needs to be.”
Risk mapping is a similar process but it involves examining liabilities by examining your physical workplace and facilities rather than considering the habits and duties of your employees. Combining both of these tools can prevent many accidents at work. For example, if you have an area of your facility where liquids might spill, you would want to include handrails to prevent slips and falls if and when that occurs.
How to Avoid Common Workplace Health and Safety Hazards:
Preventing Fatalities
The biggest threat to your employees’ lives is tied to your workplace environment, though the deaths do not occur at work but rather en route. Driving fatalities are “the biggest thing that gets people killed in this country and it’s been so for a while.”
Often overwork, sleep deprivation, and cell phone usage are behind these deadly accidents. Anything you can do to make people’s work hours predictable and regular is really helpful. After that the most helpful thing you can do is take other steps to help your employees with their work-family balance. One of the things that gets people really concerned is how they can manage childcare, how they can manage elder care, how they can get off time to just live some life besides work.
Here are three more sources of potentially fatal accidents your employees could get into and how to prevent them.
* Workplace Violence – Non-employees perpetrate most instances of fatal workplace. The disgruntled gun-toting recent fire resides more in the newspaper headlines than in the category of statistically significant concerns. Examining where employees are exchanging or guarding money, interacting with the public, or working alone or in small groups in the late or early hours of the day. You can also make sure the area around your workplace is well-lit, install security cameras, or consider scaling back your business hours if late or early operation comes to necessitate hefty security and insurance costs.
* Falls – The falls that result in fatalities tend to be in industries such as construction or landscaping. This is a case where training your employees in safety procedures and periodically evaluating their understanding and execution of those procedures is the most useful course of action. Additionally providing equipment precautions such as guardrails and rope and pulley supports when possible is also a good idea.
* Toxic Events – Gas and chemical leaks are the most common problems though asbestos continues to plague businesses moving into older facilities. “You’re going to see probably a big push on carbon monoxide detectors” in the near future. It is now mandated that natural gas have some sort of odor but preventing ventilation problems and carbon monoxide leaks is the next frontier for OSHA.
Getting struck by objects or electrocuted are two other common and preventable ways employees die.
How to Avoid Common Workplace Health and Safety Hazards:
Non-fatal Injuries
When it comes to non-fatal workplace injuries, the clear leaders are incidents of ergonomic problems and overexertion. They affect people in manufacturing, service, and office settings and regulatory bodies are increasingly cracking down on employers who ignore their employees’ ergonomic needs. Furthermore, because these injuries can give rise to chronic conditions, they result in one of the higher rates of lost work time.
Employees at computer workstations sit at a height that allows their legs to reach the ground, they should have a wrist rest, and not need to crane their neck, eyes, or back in the extreme. It is important to have lumbar support and if your office chairs don’t have this built in, you or your employees can purchase cushions that will provide that extra lower back support.
Ergonomic injuries don’t only take place when there is older office equipment with fewer adjustable parts. They can also happen simply from sitting at your desk for too long.
In addition to the wear and tear of the workplace itself on employees’ bodies, lifting heavy objects such as boxes of files can result in accidents. Good lifting technique is often ignored when there is insufficient space or time to get a job done properly, a good general rule is rather than “lifting, lowering, or carrying, you want to push, pull, or slide.”
In a manufacturing setting, hearing loss is a common problem that can creep up on you and your employees but that is easily preventable. In a manufacturing setting, hearing loss is a common problem that can creep up on you and your employees but that is easily preventable. Simply provide headphones or earplugs that cancel out high decibel levels, depending on what volume of noise the equipment in your office environment produce. But providing the equipment is not enough, you need to enforce the policy and make sure your employees are using all the protective gear.
However, whether an injury is fatal or more glancing, one of the biggest mistakes employers make is improper documentation.
A businesses human resources department can do a lot to reduce workplace accidents simply by educating employees. Making sure your employees are “current on what the local and seasonal threats are and passing out information doesn’t cost a lot, it could be a monthly e-mail. But you need to go beyond informing employees. Following up with employees to make sure the training sank in and is being incorporated into their daily responsibilities is also crucial.
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Hey Canada, it’s time to make your move! During Canada’s Healthy Workplace Month® from October 4 to 31, you’re encouraged to incorporate upbeat elements into your workplace, relationships with family and friends, life and work harmony, and your community.
CCOHS is presenting two free webinars in celebration of Healthy Workplace Month. Attend individually or as a group in your meeting or board room. All you need is a computer with Internet access. Space is limited, so pre-registration is required.
Implementing Healthy Eating Programs in the Workplace
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
1:00 – 2:00 PM EDT
Join Heather Harvey of the Ontario Public Health Association as she discusses healthy eating in the workplace and how to successfully implement healthy eating programs. It will draw on experiences learned through the Eat Smart!® Workplace Program, a healthy eating award program for Ontario workplaces. Even if your workplace is outside of Ontario, you will find value in the lessons learned and strategies discussed for starting and maintaining interest in your own healthy eating program.
Make the Move: Staying Physically Active at Work
Thursday, October 14, 2010
1:00 – 2:00 PM EDT
Get inspired to get moving, with advice from Angela Torry from the Alberta Centre for Active Living and Lindsay Wright from Be Fit For Life. They’ll outline steps and activities that your workplace can lead, promote and support to help your employees become more physically active during work hours and work breaks. Be ready to think outside the box when it comes to getting your workers moving! You’ll come away motivated and armed with fresh ideas to try out at your workplace. And if you’re a worker, you’ll take away many practical tips, ideas and demonstrations on how you can get and stay active at work – even if you are sitting at a desk all day.
For even more ideas on activities that you can do on your own or in groups, visit the Healthy Workplace Month website. While you’re there, why not consider taking the challenge? Register your organization and keep track of the activities completed by you and your colleagues. Your team could win!
Register for the webinars:
Implementing Healthy Eating Programs in the Workplace
Make the Move: Staying Physically Active at Work
Blog
The worker standing on a production line, the nurse working in a clinic and the student landscaping, all work in vastly different fields – and all share something in common: hazards.
In Canada, employers are responsible for assessing the health and safety risks of a job and for putting measures in place to ensure the safety of their workers.
Job safety analysis (JSA) is an important part of that process. It focuses on the relationship between the worker, the task, the tools, and the work environment, and tries to identify hazards before they occur.
The JSA process starts with selecting the job to be analyzed. There are several questions that need to be considered when selecting the job, such as:
- Where do accidents occur most frequently?
- Are the consequences of an accident, hazardous condition or exposure to a harmful substance potentially severe?
- Is this a newly created job?
- Has a job recently been modified?
- What are the non-routine or infrequently performed jobs?
After the specific job has been selected, a JSA is conducted following these three steps:
1. Break it down
Break the job into steps or tasks noting what is done for each, rather than how it is done. Most tasks can be summarized in less than 10 steps. These steps should be kept in their correct sequence as any step out of order may miss serious potential hazards or introduce hazards that do not actually exist.
2. Identify hazards
Carefully analyze each task of the job and list the potential health and safety hazards for each based on your observations of the job, knowledge of accident and injury causes, and work experience. Seek the input of the workers who have experience in that job.
3. Determine preventive measures
The final stage in a JSA is to determine practical ways to prevent or control the hazards that have been identified:
- Eliminate or contain the hazard by choosing a different process, modifying an existing process, improving the environment or changing the hazardous substance or tools being used. If the hazard cannot be eliminated, contain the hazard and avoid contact by using enclosures, machine guards, worker booths, or similar devices.
- Modify hazardous work procedures. Change the sequence of steps or add additional steps to the job process.
- Reduce exposure. These measures are the least effective and should only be used if no other solutions are possible. For example, you can minimize some exposure by providing personal protective equipment. To reduce the severity of an accident, provide emergency facilities such as eyewash stations.
Workers performing the job as well as the supervisor and a representative from the health and safety committee should be involved in conducting the JSA. The more skill and years experience applied to identifying hazards in a job, the safer the job and the employees will be.
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Occupational health and safety (OH&S) programs – every workplace should have one, and in most Canadian jurisdictions, they are required. An effective health and safety program provides a clear set of guidelines for activities that, if followed diligently, can reduce injuries and illnesses in the workplace.
The key to the success of the program is the manner in which it is implemented and maintained. To help you get started, CCOHS has developed a 134-page manual, Implementing a Health and Safety (OH&S) Program. This publication provides essential information, sample policies, procedures, checklists and guidance on the development, maintenance, and continual improvement of an OH&S program. You can use and customise the materials provided to create a program specific for your workplace.
Anyone who is committed to creating a healthy and safe workplace can benefit from Implementing a Health and Safety (OH&S) Program, including employers, owners, managers – and the organization as a whole. It can help organizations of any size to create an OH&S program with emphasis on effectiveness, compliance, diligence, and documentation, as well as to use their hazard assessments to prevent or reduce hazards and risks to employees. Lastly it will assist you in monitoring and improving your OH&S program. It is important to note that the information in this publication is based on best practice principles and techniques and is intended to provide guidance, rather than prescribe specific requirements. It is not intended as a legal interpretation of any federal, provincial or territorial legislation.
Ultimately an effective OH&S program can reduce workplace fatalities, illnesses and injuries and foster a workplace culture of prevention and awareness towards health and safety issues.
