Healthy And Safety Procedures
Organizational culture is not something that you can photograph or download from the Internet. However, you can see traces of it, and you can feel it when you enter some workplace. Here are some clues that you can use to identify your organization's "culture". This organization's culture provides the framework for introducing safety education and safe practices.
Many people believe that workplace safety must be everyone's concern and that the collective "everyone" needs a leader to consistently address and promote safe practices in the workplace. In most small to mid-size organizations a single person workplace safety coordinator serves this purpose helping to identify and control hazards. In larger organizations, a workplace safety committee is a must to assist in implementing the workplace safety program. This committee is of great importance to any organization as it helps create and carry out different health and safety procedures. Before an organization decides upon its safety procedures following features should be considered -reducing workers' compensation insurance costs and managing injuries and illness,examples of specific safety and health considerations, hazards and their controls, essential information and resources for compliance with the standards.
Generally any organization which abides by the compliances, follow the workplace safety and health procedures. They try create, carry out and watch over safety-specific programs and review them through monthly safety meetings and inspections. Some organizations also have a procedure of quarterly loss analysis, where injury and illness records are reviewed to find out the reasons behind them. Health and safety equipments are regularly checked and exercises carried out to train employees on safety needs. A safety committee's monthly meeting reviews any accident in the organization, overviews the accident/incident trends, tries to find out new and outstanding safety issues, gives a Safety topic of the month. This meeting is of great help as it helps to work towards an injury free workplace. A monthly workplace safety inspection helps monitor adherence to workplace safety programs, correct any unsafe acts or conditions. Try and create a "To Do" list of the committee's recommendations and assign people to correct them.
Other safety and health procedures that can cause a great impact are In-services training programs. These increase safety and health awareness among staff, educate them about changes in procedure and makes them confident about performing their work without occupational hazards. An annual schedule should be developed, which serves as guideposts for future committee members for developing safety procedures. An annual report developed focuses on year's accomplishments, continuing accident and incident trends, action plans to modify trends or significant safety issues and a In-service training program schedule for the next year. Workplace safety procedures should be included in the organization's safety manual which should be reviewed and updated on a regular basis. This manual should be given to all new and old employees and should be asked to abide by the rules prescribed. A manager's belief about workplace safety is what really matters. Many managers believe that accidents are something that happen to other people, and therefore, workplace safety is not a priority. Without a genuine commitment to establishing and maintaining a culture of safety, management will try to remain ignorant of the cost of accidents and injuries.
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