Back to Safety Articles Main PageHow to Integrate Safety into Core Business ProcessesHow do you fully implement a safety program? In a BLR webinar titled "Injury and Incident Prevention at Work: Good for Employees, Employers, and Your Bottom Line," Wayne Vanderhoof, CSP, and president of RJR Safety outlined some tips on how to integrate safety into your organization's core business processes. When you have safety and health integration, safety is a core value along with production, sales, customer service and quality. This is most effective when safety and health is balanced with and incorporated into the core business processes. If you have a management system, this allows you a systematic approach to safety and health. This can be implemented similarly to quality and environmental systems. It will go beyond basic compliance to focus on all hazards and should be a formal, documented system. One standard you can apply, says Vanderhoof, is the ANSI Z10-2005 OHSMS. This is the American National Standard for Occupational Health and Safety Management Systems. Regardless of what system you use, you will need to have a process where you plan, implement your plans, train your employees, check on the results, and entice everyone to get involved. Full Integration The planning phase may include:
The Implementation and Orientation may include:
Checking the results includes:
Getting everyone involved includes:
Ready-Made Checklists BLR's Safety Audit Checklist provides safety and health checklists on more than 50 essential workplace topics to help you integrate safety and health into core businesses processes and improve overall safety performance. Each Safety Audit Checklist section contains:
Many sections also contain a compliance checklist, which highlights key provisions of OSHA standard. All checklists can be copied and circulated to supervisors and posted for employees, the entire program is updated annually, and the cost averages only about $1 per checklist. |