ALL injuries equal, or add up to, a loss of money for every company. And imagine how much money. The U.S. Centers For Disease Control And Prevention says there are 3.6 million work-related injuries treated in emergency rooms each year.
These kind of stats point towards the job (no pun intended) that employers have in making sure their workers stay safe at all times. There are various ways to accomplish that task and our Safety Man, Dan Clark covers some of those in this short podcast.
Let’s listen in and see if there’s anything we can all do to keep ourselves and others safer by reducing workplace injuries.
TRANSCRIPT:
(:00)
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Dan Clark: Hello, I’m Dan Clark of The Safety Brief. This is where we talk about health and safety hazards in today’s demanding industrial and construction worksites.
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Reducing workplace injuries. Injuries at work are bad for employees and employers. Duh! No kidding!
(:21)
But, besides the obvious harm to workers, companies suffer too. There’s downtime in production, there are expenses related to the injury like, maybe, higher insurance premiums. Legal costs.
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Translation: injuries equals loss of money. And imagine how much money. The U.S. Centers For Disease Control And Prevention says there are 3.6 million work-related injuries treated in emergency rooms each year. So there you have some tall dollars for both workers and the employers.
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So what is the first step to reduce injuries? Identify the risks. Every industry has its own set of inherent risks. Falling from heights is big at construction sites. Coal mines have cave-ins. You need to take proactive steps to address all those issues.
(1:08)
What’s the second step to reduce? Stay OSHA compliant. OSHA’s main purpose is to keep workers safe. They’ve already done a ton of research, so take advantage of the rules and the recommendations. And here’s a bonus: it will also save you a bundle on fines.
(1:24)
Step three – Use safety signs like floor signs, wall signs and labels in risky areas that actually create visual cues that instantly show critical safety information to the workers.
(1:37)
Step four – Use the proper safety gear. The PPE—the personal protective equipment. Choose gear that will help prevent the common types of injuries in your facility. Done right, PPE can do two things: eliminate some injuries, and reduce the severity of injuries that do occur.
(1:54)
Step five – Predict injuries. “What’s that?” you say. Industry’s been predicting danger for years. It’s just common sense to put protective covers on machines with moving parts and things like that. But new technologies can also help. Computer software can use tools like models and predictive analytics, and these can identify patterns that, otherwise, would go unnoticed.
(2:17)
An example is a company called Predictive Solutions, and they make predictive software. What happens is their customers submit data from safety inspections, the ones that they have to do anyway—it’s current information and from past accidents—and they pump that into their computer. Plus they add in previous data from 15,000 other worksites and the result is that the customer receives information about areas of heightened risk. One customer of theirs in Atlanta reduced injuries at their utility company by over 65% over four years. For more information go to predictivesolutions.com.
(2:56)
So, what have we learned here in the past few minutes? Well, improving workplace safety makes sense from every angle. First and foremost, the employees will be more secure. And two, the company will be saving money. According to OSHA for every dollar invested into safety programs, the employer is able to save between four and six dollars. So it really benefits everyone to be involved in safety.
(3:19)
Well, that’s all for now. Join us again for more tips and techniques on how to stay safety compliant in today’s ever-changing landscape of safety requirements. I’m Dan Clark of The Safety Brief, sponsored by Creative Safety Supply. See the website at creativesafetysupply.com
(3:36)
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