Don’t Belt Your Employees

Back injuries are among the most common workplace injuries, accounting for an estimated one in five on-the-job injuries. Those injuries cost U.S. industry billions of dollars every year, not to mention the pain and suffering the injured workers have to endure.

One of the most common means that employers use to address this problem is to mandate use of “back support belts”. The two biggest problems with this solution are the employer expense ($15-$20 each on average), and the misinformed belief that they actually prevent back injury. According to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, employers that rely on back belts to prevent injury should be aware that there is no scientific evidence supporting their use. NIOSH goes on to state:

“As a result of the NIOSH review, the Institute is concerned with the potentially harmful effects associated with a false sense of security that may accompany back belt use. There is some research showing that workers believe they can lift more when wearing a back belt. If workers falsely believe they are protected, they may subject themselves to even greater risk by lifting more weight than they would have without a belt.“

Here are some keys to preventing back injuries from taking down your workers – and your bottom line.

Warning Signs and Tags – Would OSHA Approve Yours?

OSHA says that its specifications for workplace safety signs and tags apply to the design, application, and use of all signs or symbols intended to indicate and define specific hazards.

According to OSHA, all workplace safety signs must:

• Contain sufficient information to be easily understood.
• Be concise, accurate, and easy to read.
• Identify the hazard.
• Explain in a few words how to prevent accidents and injuries.

In addition, all signs should be placed in prominent locations where workers can see them before they face the hazard.

You also need to be sure that your signs don’t themselves constitute a hazard. That’s why OSHA requires safety signs to have rounded or blunt corners and be free of sharp edges, burrs, splinters, or other sharp projections. Also, the ends or heads of bolts or other fastening devices must be located in such a way that they can’t cause injury.

Must All Safety Training Be Documented?

Do you really need to document every bit of your safety training?  The short answer is, yes, you do, even if OSHA doesn’t require it.

More than 100 separate OSHA rules feature training requirements. Some of those standards also require you to certify that training has been successfully completed and that employees have learned the skills and information they need to work safely.

For example, OSHA’s process safety management standard (29 CFR 1910.119) requires documentation of training, as does the powered industrial truck standard (29 CFR 1910.178). And DOT’s hazardous materials transportation regulations (49 CFR Parts 171-180) require you to keep records of training conducted in the preceding 3 years.

Holiday Road Safety: Stay Safe This Holiday Season

From the Centers for Disease Control-

During the upcoming holiday season, and all year, keep safety in mind whenever you’re on the road. Tips from CDC’s Injury Center on motor vehicle safety can help you protect yourself, your passengers, and your family and friends. Whether you’re headed around town, out of town, or out to celebrate, we wish you a safe holiday season.

Securing a Workplace.. Legally

With terrorism and workplace violence in the news, workers are understandably concerned about their security. While there is no way to guard against every possibility, there are policies and relatively simple measures that employers can take to help secure a facility and protect personnel and property. Lack of adequate security can result in injury to employees and long-term economic disruption for companies. Employers need to address security concerns at the very highest level of the organization, integrate it into business operations and employment policies, and create awareness in every employee.

MSDS Usage: Read It, or WAG It?

MSDSs provide essential safety and health information about the chemicals in your workplace. But they can only do their job and help protect against chemical hazards if employees actually use them. The MSDS should be the main resource employees rely on when they have questions about chemical hazards and precautions. But do they actually consult the MSDS or do they guess?

One effective way to instill the essential safety habit of actively using MSDSs is to hold refresher training on the different hazardous chemicals employees work with. Make the MSDS for each chemical the centerpiece of the training session. During the session, take employees section by section through the MSDS and show them exactly where to find the information they need and how to interpret that into action.

Workplace Violence is Not a Random Act

Workplace violence is awful, and to deal with that awfulness, we tend to describe it as a random act by an unstable person. Yet, thats not true, according to Chris McGoey, an expert and consultant on workplace violence who has investigated many of the worst cases in recent history. “In virtually every case there were signs beforehand which were ignored,” says McGoey. Plus, the sad fact is, workplace violence is far more common than anyone would think. Even as this story was being written, media reports told of an ex-employee at a nail polish factory in New Windsor, N.Y., who returned a year after he was fired and shot a receptionist and the two owners of the business. A USA Today analysis last year indicated that an average of 25 people per week are injured and one person per week dies from workplace violence.

McGoey acknowledges that “its impossible to write a manual that will cover every possible scenario.” So, instead, McGoey says, you plan for a few probable ones and spend the rest of your time getting your response plan down pat. Here are some of McGoeys guidelines.

Disaster Training or Training Disaster?

Emergency training is not “one size fits all.”

The proper emergency response to a fire might be quite different than to a hurricane, a release of toxic chemicals, or a terrorist attack. Not knowing the difference could make a bad situation a lot worse—and you don’t want to wait until a disaster happens to find out that your emergency training is … well, a disaster. So the first step in an effective training program is to identify what types of emergencies might actually occur and determine the appropriate response for each. This may mean that you need to have more than one type of training for different possible emergencies.

Are Employees Prepared for Emergencies?

Who needs to have an Emergency Action Plan?

There are two different, but equally correct, answers to this question. The first answer is that OSHA requires an Emergency Action Plan (EAP) only for employers who are covered by certain standards, such as “Fixed Extinguishing Systems” and “Process Safety Management of Highly Hazardous Chemicals” (other standards also require EAPs). The second answer is that every company really should have an EAP. Not only does OSHA highly recommend it, but it simply makes sense to have a plan for a safe, orderly response to emergencies such as fires, weather events, releases of hazardous substances, etc. And note that even relatively minor incidents, such as small fires or spills, constitute an “emergency” if they trigger an alarm and require employees to stop what they’re doing and evacuate their work areas.

Get Back to Basics with Safety

Take time to remind employees about safety basics.

If most of your safety training sessions focus on the details of specific hazards and work practices, you can easily forget to step back and remind employees about the “big picture.” Fundamentally, that means developing an all-around “safety attitude”—keeping safety in mind at all times and in all situations—not just at work, but also at home and on vacation. In fact, practicing safety at work is only part of the picture: Nearly 90 percent of fatal injuries and two-thirds of nonfatal but disabling injuries to American workers occur away from the job.