The safety information you provide to your workers is vitally important for a number of reasons, not the least of which is keeping your employees safe.
When an employee is injured on the job, there are many repercussions. Primary, of course, is the impact on your worker and his/her family. Additional negative impacts will ripple through the rest of your workforce, especially if the injury was seen as preventable.
If you end up in litigation, an attorney will want to know your record at holding safety training. If you have not been conducting regular, verifiable, safety meetings it will definitely affect the legal outcome.
With an injury, your Worker's Comp. and/or insurance rates will probably increase. You will be less likely to attract and keep top quality employees if your company is perceived as not operating in a safe manner. This will affect overall employee productivity in a variety of ways, none of them positive.
When you train on specific safety requirements, be sure to follow through to make certain the guidelines are followed. For example, that correct PPE gear is actually being worn, eye and ear protection being utilized, etc.
Your safety messages also need to cover generalities: for example, emphasizing that employee safety always comes first. Recently, a sweeper was struck by a locomotive because the operator didn't want to do minor damage to the sweeper by breaking the crossing arm that was wedged between the back of the chassis and the front of the hopper. This unique situation was probably not covered in a safety meeting; however, if the organization’s message of ‘employee safety first’ had been followed, the accident would not have occurred.
At the World Sweeping Association, each month we provide WSA members with a ‘Safety First!’ bulletin compiled by nationally-recognized safety expert, John Meola. That’s the importance we place upon the topic.
by Ranger Kidwell-Ross, Executive Director, World Sweeping Association
