What are the Top Strategies for Workplace Accident Review and Ongoing Prevention?
Accidents and injuries can occur even in the cleanest work environments with strict safety and accident prevention policies in place.
What is important is the way the organization reacts to these occurrences. The first thing to make sure is how you can quickly get appropriate medical attention for an injured employee. Besides that, companies must perform accident analysis.
What Is Accident Analysis?
Accident analysis is a deep examination of why the event occurred in the first place. The accident investigation may reveal new hazards present in the workplace or safety protocol violations. Thus, it is important to drill-down to the actual cause of the mishap as it enables the management with the right measures needed to keep the workplace safe from similar incidents in future.
Steps for Accident Analysis
Analyzing incidents and preventing them from happening again involves several steps.
- Decide who will conduct the investigation. Internal safety procedures might require that the investigation be led by the supervisor with the most direct knowledge of the accident; or by members of a workplace safety committee; or, if necessary, by third-party investigators.
- Create a plan. The written accident analysis plan should include identifying the purpose of the investigation, the investigation roles/personnel involved, a timeline for the investigation, and methods of reporting results.
- Ensure investigators are trained properly. Some training is required for individuals who conduct workplace investigations. Do this during the regular timeframe of work safety training sessions.
- Be clear in communication. Finally, it is wise to be clear in your communications about the company’s investigation policies, and specifically emphasize that investigations are designed to prevent further injuries, and not to assign blame. Ideal domain to communicate accident analysis policies would be employee handbook.
What Is an Accident Prevention Plan?
An accident prevention plan isn’t just a good first step when it comes to codifying the internal methods for mitigating potential workplace accidents and injuries because it also helps employees understand their well-being matters.
Accident Prevention Plan Parts
Key components to a successful plan include:
- Commitment of management. It’s always wise to start the plan with a clean statement from the company’s highest leadership, expressing genuine care for minimizing risk and keeping all employees as safe as possible.
- Hazards analysis. A good accident plan may also serve as a catalog of some of the most serious or common hazards encountered in the work setting, whether based on existing incident reports or just a walk-through inspection.
- Recordkeeping. The accident approach could likewise imply the manners in which faculty will check any working environment mishaps or wounds and responses to those mishaps.
- Training. Articulate training needs and expectations clearly, such as how often training in-house safety training will be offered.
- Quality control and audits. A risk management plan should include policies regarding safety inspections and audits.
How to Minimize Business Risk in the Workplace
Employees need to be feeling safe and protected 24/7 in order to function. That’s what makes accident prevention in the workplace so vital — a top priority for employers and employees alike in just about any working environment.
One of the best ways to increase your ability to promote workplace safety is to get advanced training, such as the safety classes offered by Safety Counselling in Albuquerque, NM.
By pursuing safety classes for your company and its employees, it’s possible to learn the skills needed to conquer accident analysis, risk assessment and more — which, for everyone in the workforce, means newer heights of safety.