TIPS FOR PREVENTING WORKPLACE ACCIDENTS
OEHS provides the following excerpt for University Supervisors from the Arbil safety blog: Each year, more than two million workers are injured severely enough on the job that they cannot return to work and need ongoing medical care. As a supervisor, it’s your job to help protect employees from accidents that threaten their work and well being. Although you are responsible for creating a safe work environment, it is each worker’s responsibility to take an active role in maintaining safety.
So make sure your employees are following best practices to help prevent accidents in our workplace.
- Shortcuts and shortcomings:
It’s natural to want to get the job finished on schedule — or even ahead of time — but with a “get it done quick” attitude, accidents happen. Don’t take shortcuts. Stick to the instructions and work with diligence and awareness of your surroundings. Also, if there are shortcomings in the instructions, don’t begin the work until they are clarified and all your questions are answered. You must always be comfortable and familiar with the procedure before commencing any work. - Make PPE a VIP:
Personal Protective Equipment is crucial to prevent injury, so make sure you wear it… and wear it properly. This includes:
– Goggles and face protection to protect from flying particles, chemicals or caustic liquids.
– Gloves to prevent cuts, scrapes, punctures, burns and chemical absorption.
– Hard hats to safeguard against falling objects.
– Safety shoes or closed-toe footware for work areas where heavy objects or chemicals could be dropped and injure the feet.
– Ear muffs or ear plugs to protect against hearing damage in noisy workplaces.
FOR supervisors: Providing the safety equipment isn’t enough. You must make sure that our workers know how to use it properly.
- Shipshape safety:
Many workers don’t realize the negative consequences of poor housekeeping. If an unkempt workplace becomes the norm — paper, debris, clutter and spills are accepted as “familiar” — then more serious health and safety hazards are overlooked and injuries become more probable. Housekeeping goes beyond personal cleanliness, which includes keeping work areas orderly, taking care of any slip-and-trip hazards as soon as they arise and removing waste and fire hazards regularly. Assess your work environment with a critical eye and pay attention to the layout of the workplace, aisle marking, adequacy of storage and maintenance. Report dangers or deficiencies right away.
Full article here.
