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Reasons for establishing a successful safety program:
- To prevent occupational injuries and illnesses
- To comply with regulatory requirements
- To enhance employee morale
- To develop a positive safety culture
Goal of a Successful Safety Program
It prevents occupational injuries and illnesses, property damage, or citations for not being in compliance with governmental standards.
What does it take to establish a successful safety program? Structure The Injury & Illness Prevention Program (IIPP) is required in California and it provides a place where policies, procedures, and activities can be inserted.The IIPP structure is an excellent means to establish a strong safety program for an organization. Knowing What Has Already Happened Accident/incident reports are reviewed to discover causes and what has or has not been done to prevent such mishaps from again being sustained in the future. Knowing What Could Cause a Mishap to Occur What exposures (risks) pose a threat to people working for the organization?Risks include unsafe acts, unsafe conditions, written safety programs that are not current, or do not meet all the governmental standards requiring compliance. Style of Management Designing a safety program to fits the organization's structure ultimately makes the program more successful.What works in one organization might not work in another. How to implement the safety program? Involvement Give everyone in the organization an opportunity to have input into the safety program.The basic IIPP structure must be in place, but the activities under each required structural piece are flexible so managers, supervisors and employees can review it and give their input.Involvement generates buy in so the safety program belongs to everyone. Accountability Recognizing employees for working safely and correcting employees for not working safely is a primary part of how a safety program is managed.If accountability does not exist, the safety program is simply a document, not a vibrant managed activity. Priority Setting A successful safety program requires a structure with everyone working toward implementing the following activities: - Preventing the kinds of losses having already been sustained
- Mitigating the risk exposures continuing to exist
- Seeking to comply with governmental safety standards, such as Cal-OSHA
Compliance The last item in priority setting, compliance, is a never-ending effort. Safety specialists have to know how to search for answers, interpret, apply and document standards for their organization. Foundational Safety Program Efforts Beyond the IIPP, safety programs need to include these injury prevention activities at the minimum: - Good housekeeping
- Good illumination
- Hand injury prevention
- Slip, trip and fall prevention
- Back injury prevention
- Repetitive motion reduction
The more risks identified, the more systems or programs need to be in place. Once a hazard is identified, the safety program deals with it in the following priority order: - Avoid or eliminate the identified hazard
- Engineer out the hazard
- Implement administrative controls such as job rotation and breaks
- Create training programs to increase knowledge, skills and judgment
- Have employees wear personal protective equipment
Establishing a successful safety program is both an initial and an ongoing process.Start with the basic IIPP and then build to integrate all programs and activities needed to prevent occupational injuries and illnesses. Note:The activities noted in this article are presented in detail in Safety Center's Safety Management Specialist Certificate course on this subject. ~Bob Lapidus, CSP | 
