Are you protecting your most valuable asset–your employees? Is your company at risk for employees getting hurt on the job and incurring the costs of losing key people? June is National Safety Month and time to think about your safety attitude and programs.
Our obligation as employers is to see that employees go home at night safely–just as they arrived in the morning! If you don’t have a safety program you are proud of, now is the time to take steps to improve it. You can’t do it all at once. There’s too much. But you can start. Take small first steps. But take those steps now. Don’t be the next employer to call Model First Aid, Safety & Training and say, “I need a safety program immediately…I’ve been fined by MiOSHA…we just had a bad accident here at work.” We get those calls. Fatalities even. We really don’t like them. And they are preventable.
Here are some categories to start thinking about. The Bureau of Labor Statistics says that 65% of workers’ compensation costs come from five common workplace injuries.
- Overexertion: caused by pushing, pulling, carrying, holding or throwing (40% of all workplace injuries). In fact, back pain accounts for about 25% of all workers’ compensation payments, totaling about $10 billion per year!
- Slips, trips and falls, from wet floors or other tripping hazards
- Being struck by equipment or an object, or a vehicle
- Falls to a lower level: preventable by using proper fall protection, ladder safety or scaffolding (So far in Michigan in 2017, 4 of the 9 worker deaths have been caused by falls!)
- Other exertions or bodily reactions: which cause strains and sprains
There are about 4.5 injuries annually per 100 fulltime employees. Injured employees required an average of 19 therapy visits. The average number of work days lost to injuries was nine lost work days. A work-related injury resulted in an average loss of approximately $40,000 including wages, productivity loss and medical expenses.
Do you have a program in place for: lockout/tagout, head, ear, eye, and hand safety; forklift training, emergency evacuation, fire prevention, bloodborne pathogen safety, hazardous materials, etc?
Safety training can actually be made fun. Employees don’t have to dread it….and you as the trainer don’t have to fear it either. Try some icebreakers, humor, visuals, games. Mix videos with ‘lecture’ training. We don’t recommend online training in that the interaction between co-workers, along with an expert trainer, is very important, and you lose all that with online training.
Of course, Model First Aid, Safety & Training can help by doing a safety audit of your company, and helping you with safety programs and we are happy to conduct your training classes for you. We will help you keep your employees and workplace SAFER. Here is our contact information: 800-968-6491 or jons@modelcoverall.com
Here are some good links for more about safety in the workplace. Start NOW!
www.modelfirstaid.com
www.nsc.org
www.osha.gov
www.michigan.gov/miosha
www.in.gov/dol/iosha.
Have a Clean and Safe Day!