Every safety program has two major objectives: injury prevention and compliance with company policies, and state and federal regulations. But, somewhere along the way, a safety program has to pay for itself in terms of increased production, reduced workers’ compensation costs, and improvements in employee morale. The safety program has to add value, otherwise, it becomes a drain on resources and it will be hard to keep management and employees interested. Avoiding fines and penalties in the event of a compliance inspection is another cost savings that can be realized, but be very hard to quantify.

Injury prevention and compliance doesn’t always go hand in hand. It’s possible to have very few injuries and no compliance or great compliance and lots of injuries. To get both, safety has to become part of the organizational culture. The success of an environmental, health and safety program depends on the participation of everyone in the company. Without buy-in at all levels, the safety program will be just another book collecting dust.

The recommendation from the experts (including OSHA) is to get employees at all levels involved in the development of a safety program. A safety program has to be approved and implemented from the highest levels, but getting input from all levels gives everyone some degree of ownership. This will give your employees an incentive to comply with necessary changes in policy, procedures and culture and greatly increase the chance of success.

Buy-in, or the willingness of an employee to follow the rules, is an important ingredient in a successful program. Most people are willing to work safely, I’ve never known anyone who went to work and decided to get hurt, but there is a natural resistance to change. Injuries happen. A bigger problem exists when people expect to get hurt on the job. Injury prevention is a key to success. If you can keep your workers from getting hurt, everything else just gets better. Production, quality, employee morale and the bottom line all improve.

After a program is in place, it may be necessary to conduct some training to make sure everyone knows the rules and what is expected. Responsibility for the program has to be assigned at all levels. After that, it’s a matter of monitoring the workplace, correcting errors and holding employees at all levels accountable for safety. Enforcement of the rules has to be consistent and evenly applied. The program has to be evaluated periodically to identify what’s working, and fix what isn’t working.

A key step to preventing injuries is to keep employees focused on doing their job in a safe manner. One way to do that is to conduct a task specific job safety briefing before starting work. This briefing can be called a job safety analysis, job hazard analysis or anything you want to call it. The important thing is to keep your employees involved in the process and focused on doing their job safely.

The immediate supervisor should conduct a job safety briefing at the beginning of each workday and anytime the scope of the work changes significantly. The purpose of the briefing is to identify the steps needed to accomplish the task, the hazards that are expected and ways to eliminate the hazards or keep the worker from getting hurt. Input from employees involved in the task should be used to identify all the hazards associated with the task. Upper level managers should attend occasionally and the safety manager on a regular basis to give management support to the process and to demonstrate that safety is a major corporate concern.

The task specific safety briefing is an important tool and can be used in conjunction with a task debriefing to keep the employees focused on doing their job safely. The debriefing should get input from the employee and identify what went right, what went wrong and what can be done to correct what went wrong. It keeps the employee involved in the safety program and makes them part of the solutions that continue to reduce injuries in the workplace.

There is a lot of information available from the OSHA website. Many states offer assistance in developing workplace safety programs and there are many commercial resources like JJ Keller and BLR that can help start an effective safety and health program.

When Safety and Health are part of the organization culture and a way of life, everyone wins. Employees have fewer injuries, and the bottom line always improves.