How To make Sure If Your Safety Program Personnel Is Properly Trained?

How to make sure your safety personnel are properly trained to run your safety program? This is been an age-old question that most companies have asked themselves at least once or twice throughout the years. Should you send them for all OH&S training in university, or do you send them for the training that certifying partners offer.

I guess it's really up to you as the manager to determine what training is required. In my opinion all health and safety personnel should have the minimum training that the certifying partners offer, but the more training acquired the better they will be able to adapt to certain situations as they arise. For example the more knowledge you have on the occupational health and safety codes the better you will be able to protect your company against violating those codes.

The Alberta construction safety association has many different courses that would give you a little bit of training in those areas, or a lot of training depending on what your company does. En-form also has a great deal of training programs that would assist most companies in training their safety personnel for the oil patch type of work.

One thing I would recommend for sure is to choose somebody for your health and safety program that you believe will stay with the company for a number of years. One of the biggest problems with safety personnel is that once they get all the training required, larger companies offer them more stable and rewarding positions that they simply can't refuse. Some companies have policies which state that if you leave the company within one year of receiving the training that you have to pay the training costs back. The easiest way to avoid these pitfalls is to appoint a workplace health and safety officer that you believe will stay with the company for at least three years. Choose a salary for the individual that is within the industry standards and carry-on.

As an owner of a business you should make it a point to take the auditing course through your certifying partner so that you can supervise your safety personnel and know they're doing their jobs correctly. As a safety consultant I have received many phone calls from managers and owners for the matter if their safety personnel quits the job, it can be the worst situation. In one case the safety person never actually did anything for almost 9 months. This is horribly frustrating for any manager or owner to realize they've been duped like this. Also if you do take the training then you will be able to provide guidance to your auditor on those important issues that touch both management and worker.

Services Offered By Safety Management System

At Safety Services Company- Alberta, we inspect to make sure the company is in  compliant with their accident and incident investigations. We would expect to see corrective actions assigned to an individual with a target date set and then a manager signature when the task is completed and inspected by the manager.

One of the most important thing in a safety program is actually inspections. Work site inspections by supervisors and formal project inspections by senior management are a good tool to ensure that compliance is being met. Again we would expect to see the deficiencies identified and corrective actions suggested by naming the individuals responsible and setting a target date for completion.

One of the last things we look at is the actual health and safety statistics which your company keeps. You would be really surprised to find that most companies fail at keeping statistics. They will be able to tell you how many hours a worker worked and how many overtime hours they worked but, they would not be able to tell you how many first aid incidents they had last January or how many man-hours were lost due to minor incidents or injuries and what was the cause for most of those incidents and injuries. These stats help your safety person try to get ahead of trends. If for example, you realize by looking at your stats that you have a lot of injuries, just before winter, then in September your safety person will talk about these injuries in safety meetings in attempt to educate the workers to reduce the injuries to a lower amount. If you don’t catch the trend then you miss the boat as far as preventing injuries is concerned. Safety program is designed to help the safety person know the trend and avoid injuries.

When evaluating your safety program is finished, we will give you a detailed list of the good things that are in your program that you should keep up and also a list of things that need improvement. we will even give you suggestions on how you can make those improvements or if you would like we can fix the problems for you at a reasonable cost.

Prerequisites to Improve Workplace Safety

As a business owner it is your responsibility to take care of health and safety of people in the workplace. This will help your employees to constantly improve their productivity and efficiently operate your business. Due to unsafe practices at workplace, there are many incidents that take place and that usually happens because staff is not every well trained to use machinery properly and the basic equipment. In order to maintain workplace safety, it is vital to carefully follow occupational health and safety measures to reduce the accidents at workplace. Following are some issues that you should really take of in order to improve workplace safety. 

• Workplace safety is of utmost importance and some of the most common issues that employees face at workplace include harmful substances, manual handling and problems with different types of machinery.

• To improve workplace safety, it is essential to give clear instructions to your team members to ensure they know the right way to do the job. No matter what task you assign them, make sure you always mention safety instructions required for the job.

• There are small things that one should take care of to increase workplace safety such as wet or slippery floors, properly lit parking space, etc. Also you need to make sure that all machinery works in a proper order so that it doesn’t cause any harm to anyone.

• Physical injuries are one of the most common incidents that take place in offices. Some of the most common injuries include cuts, falls or different kind of trips.

With the use of increasing technology and occupational workplace safety methods, you can improve the safety of your work premises. There are many simple and cost effective ways of implementing workplace safety measures in your business. You can easily engage your workers in safe work practices with the help of safety and auditing services. Safety and auditing services include building manuals for your business that includes codes of practice, safe work procedures that will also help you to obtain a Cor or Se-Cor safety program. In a working environment, make sure your safety procedures are interactive so that the training sessions are quick, interesting and significant to the staff. You can always process workplace safety programs as mini marketing campaign that will not only improve the performance, but it will also provide better communication and amity in the workplace.

The Role of Occupational Health and Safety Program

Occupational health and safety program is the one that deals with managing the safety of workers in an organization. Safety of people at work is considered to be one of the essential parts of the workplace environment. It is a moral responsibility of every employer to safeguard not only their employees but also the visitors.

Therefore, it is important that (occupational health and safety)OHS training programs are followed and implemented vigorously at workplace in order to increase the efficiency of the business. Following are the basics of occupational health and Safety that are the legal responsibility of everybody in an organization.

Health and Safety Management Systems - These systems are used by organizations to carefully manage OHS. It’s an all- inclusive business detailed processes focused on managing safety risks. The program includes – policy developments, planning and implementation arrangements, organizational development programs, managing and reviewing performance arrangements and auditing on regular basis.

Measuring performance – Supervision is important in order to measure performance and obtain feedback on programs have been implemented. Measuring OHS performance and checking the effectiveness of the management procedures on regular basis will help you improve constantly.

Resources – Resources of each organization are different and will depend on what works best for them. Regardless of the fact that in which business you are, it is vital to carefully manage your time, people and financial resources for improved health and safety management system.

Responsibility – Following the effective health and safety policies at work will boost the confidence of your employees and decrease occupational accidents and illnesses. It is the responsibility of higher management to actively participate and follow all the policies and support the safety of their employees.

All of the above mentioned factors are very important to follow in business premises to get the best outcome. Having an open discussion about all the implemented policies between the parties will help to make the process more effective. Like any other business program, the participation of company leaders is apparent in health and safety programs.

Occupational Health and Safety- Ensure safety of your Employees

Employee and workplace safety services are usually overlooked by businesses. It is vital for your business premises to follow good health and safety plans that will help to reduce occupational risks. The safety requirements becomes even more vital if the employees are working at construction site, fishing sites or in mining industry. Setting up proper safety program will not only improve the revenues but it will also boost the confidence of employees and you will witness enhanced company safety records. The demand of safety service companies is on a rise as companies are now looking for occupational heath and safety services in order to improve the quality and performance of people at work place. Usually companies offer compensation to their employers when it comes to work related accidents, injuries and so on but that is not enough. It is of utmost importance to create a healthy working environment by implementing safety measures.

Even if you start implementing occupational health and safety (OHS) systems, there are chances that the employers might still face legal obligations coming up from OHS related claims. But this also proves that the employers aim to foster a healthy and safe working environment for the employees. In an effort to ensure constantly progressed health and safety at work, it is important for an organization to utilize the tried, tested and scientifically proven services of OHS Alberta. These organizations have well trained staff and team of professional that work within the designed course of action.

Utilizing health services is considered to be a much better solution when it comes to the piled up cost of the employee illness and hazards at work. The pressure of insurance companies on these agencies to reduce pay-outs and liabilities has given a rise to occupational health professional services. As a result, now you can have steady services whenever you need it to handle work-place issues. Following areas are covered under office safety and auditing services.

• Medical Services- These services are used in cases where employee is unable to work due to illness or other health conditions. In such cases, it is always advised to have a physician or specialist who can consult them.

• Legal Services- These services are used to fulfill the existing labor laws, safety laws and compensation laws. Skilled professionals ensure that all the proceedings are carefully handled and the management is aware of the new developments in the field.

• Education- These services play an important role in creating knowledge and awareness about occupational health and safety in the working premises. It really helps in broadening the horizon by holding awareness workshops, safety drills and ascertaining that plenty of diet, exercise and fitness regimes are introduced giving health benefits to everyone.

With all the above mentioned points, it is proved that having efficient heath and safety services are imperative in order to reduce the accidents at workplace. It is very important for you to have a clear plan that is focused to prevent the damage or to be kept to a minimum. These services are very helpful for people who are in experienced or young worker, as they are the one who are most likely to have accidents.