3 Key Components to Ongoing Workplace Safety
North America Occupational Safety and Health (NAOSH) Week is a time set aside for all employers and employees to review, renew and revamp the health and safety practices of their workplace and work environment, as well as reflect and remember those workers who have been hurt or killed on the job. Although NAOSH week this year was May 3rd – 8th, the importance of injury prevention and safety in the workplace should be a year-round process.
Preventing or reducing workplace accidents and injuries can result in fewer WCB claims, lower WCB claims costs and ultimately impact WCB premiums. Three key components of accident and injury prevention are education, experience and attention
1. Education
Education is the cornerstone of every job and occupation. Understanding the procedures, expectations, materials, tools, environment and hazards of a job is one of the initial steps of employment whether you are a new hire or a changing positions within the company. Proper training, guidance and feedback ensures that a worker is capable and competent to perform their duties in a safe manner. Most jobs or positions do not remain exactly the same and are subject to changes, updates, upgrades, modifications and revisions, therefore education is and should be an ongoing process. If you know and understand what you are doing, why you are doing it and how you are doing it you are less likely to make a mistake that may result in an accident or injury to yourself or others.
2. Experience
Experience comes with time. The longer you perform your job, presumably the better you get at it, the more you understand it and the safer you are in it. Many workplace injuries are due to inexperience and happen shortly after being hired or changing positions within a company. Even workers who performed the same job for years at a different company face a learning curve as the get familiar with new procedures, equipment, co-workers and surroundings. Experience can make the transition to new procedures, equipment and environments easier but with every change there is an increased risk of the unforeseen and unexpected.
3. Attention
Attention is probably the most important ongoing aspect of workplace safety and the one most easily overlooked. Paying attention to your workstation, work environment, the tools, the equipment, the machinery, your co-workers, your surroundings at all times is one of the best ways to avoid a workplace accident or injury. Observing and assessing all aspects of your job should not just happen at the beginning of your day but throughout your shift, to see and correct a potential hazard is the best way to avoid a workplace accident or injury. Too often, it is when we let our guard down, stop paying attention or become complacent that things go wrong and accidents happen.
Although we will never completely be able to avoid all workplace accidents or injuries, we can hopefully reduce the frequency and severity of them by making sure the proper education is provided, the appropriate experience is available and the constant attention is applied.
If you would like to find out more about what your organization can do to reduce or prevent workplace accidents and incidents, you can contact us directly using our chat feature during business hours, by email at [email protected] or [email protected], by phone, at 1-844-377-9545 or you can connect with us on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn.
