By Don Moen, ABC of Wisconsin
Every year, more than 1,000 construction workers are killed on the job (average of three deaths per day), and more than two million suffer serious job-related injuries or illnesses. Even one serious workplace injury or illness can have a devastating impact on a small business, including costs associated with higher workers’ compensation premiums, medical expenses, legal fees, replacement worker training, lost productivity, equipment repairs, and lower worker morale – to say nothing of the overwhelming personal impacts.
Employers that make job safety and health a real part of their everyday operations will benefit in the long run. Investing in safety and health now will help you avoid possible losses in the future. A safe business is a sound business.
Traditional approaches are often reactive; that is, problems are addressed only after a worker is injured or becomes sick, a new standard or regulation is published, or an outside inspection finds a problem.
The ABC of WI safety team encourages every workplace to have a safety and health program (system). Through these systems, the safety team will provide resources to help member companies develop safety and health programs and evaluate these programs through STEP’s Safety Management System, a benchmarking and continuous improvement tool.
This is all part of a proactive approach for managing workplace safety and health; recognizing that finding and fixing hazards before they cause injury or illness is a far more effective approach. The recommended practices present a step-by-step approach to implementing a successful safety and health program, built around seven core elements:
If you are just launching a program, the ABC of WI safety team can begin with a basic set-up, with simple goals to achieve. If you focus on achieving goals, monitoring performance, and evaluating outcomes, your workplace can progress to higher levels of safety and health achievement.
By developing and implementing a total safety and health program through the ABC of WI safety team, members are expressing and documenting good faith and commitment to protecting their workers’ health and safety. Doing so does not usually require additional workers or high costs. You can integrate safety and health into your other business functions through the ABC of WI safety team with modest effort.
The key to a successful safety and health program is to view it as a part of your day-to-day business operations. As members incorporate it into their business cultures, safety and health awareness becomes second nature to you and your workers, leading to a safe and sound business. Every workplace should have a safety and health program that includes management leadership, worker participation, and a systematic approach to finding and fixing hazards.
Regular workplace inspections are an important tool for identifying hazards and fixing them. ABC of WI offers no-cost to low-cost and confidential safety and health services to member companies. Four highly educated construction safety and health professionals from ABC of WI safety team works with employers to identify safety and health hazards in workplaces and how to fix them. The ABC of WI safety team also advises members on how to comply with OSHA standards, train and educate workers, and assist with establishing and improving safety and health programs along with defending members against OSHA citations.
To take advantage of this resource, members just call ABC of WI and safety team will determine the scope of the visit. The visit may focus on a single concern of the member, or it may involve a thorough hazard assessment of the entire company and its operations. Once we have developed an essential safety-program, we can take the next step focusing on developing a world-class safety program to ensure your company stays on the continuous path to safety excellence.
Until recently, relatively few studies have been conducted on the correlation between the use of measures companies can take to keep workers safe on jobsites – leading indicators and the number of incidents/accidents and injuries that occur – lagging indicators. Thus, to quantify the positive impact of proactive injury and hazard elimination programs on the jobsite, ABC has gathered data from STEP participants in construction and analyzed the aggregated data to determine how safety measures actually improve lagging indicator performance.
From this data we found STEP to be a great safety benchmarking and improvement tool, which you as a member can use to measure your safety programs and policies. STEP is a key component detailed questionnaire to help you meet your goal of implementing and or enhancing safety programs that reduce jobsite incident rates. /with the help of STEP, you can apply these ABC’s world-class processes to improve safety performance regardless of company size or type of work and you have the ultimate in safety programs.
The model for a world-class safety program utilizes STEP and contains the following elements:
Top management engagement and commitment matters. Employer involvement at the top level of company management produces a 63% reduction in total accidents.
New-hire orientations are standard practice throughout the construction industry and are designed to onboard new employees into the culture and sharing policies and procedures of their new employer. This process is normally conducted before an employee sets foot on a jobsite or enters a training program. The onboarding process can take many forms and vary in length, but the most important aspect is introducing a new employee to the culture and norms of the company to indoctrinate each individual and help him/her understand the hows and whys of what a company does and expects of the new employee. Here, senior leadership delivers the introduction of the respective company’s safety culture and core values. This process experiences nearly 50% lower incident rates than companies that limit their orientations to basic safety and health compliance topics.
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