Workplace safety is the most important consideration for employers and business owners. Every working environment, including that of a professional transcription service, need to be comfortable and safe for the people working there. Only then can efficiency and productivity be assured.
Over the past 20 years American Equity Underwriter (AEU) has helped hundreds of businesses restructure their safety programs and they are very well aware of what works for a safe work culture. Based on their experience here are seven guidelines on how to ensure safe work culture.
- Begin from the top: The top management is responsible for creating a safe work culture, communicating with employees about their safety and rewarding those who try to keep the workplace safe. Ensure that your management team takes initiatives such as equipping staff members with the right tools and allowing them adequate time to operate safely. Give opportunity for your employees to take part in safety programs. Hold regular safety meetings to collect feedback and recommendations.
- Involvement is good: Request your employees to actively take part in safety programs. Come up with building safety award suggestions and review programs to encourage involvement. Set up a safety committee and safety stewards that include staff members of all levels and quickly respond to employee reports. Create a safety suggestion program and conduct regular safety interviews to show that you respect employees’ input.
- Identify, assess and control hazards: It is important to identify workplace hazards, review them and take efforts to prevent safety lapses.
- Evaluate and improve: Make sure to assess and improve your safety programs by reviewing measures like injuries and illness statistics, safety inspection reports, employee training results, and so on. Check up on the practices and procedures established by the safety program and find out if they are appropriate to worksite conditions and follow OSHA requirements.
- Train your employees: Provide safety training for all employees with individual training for each and every member. Training can be given about topics such as hazards, company safety practices, protective measures, and emergency action procedures. Employees who manage groups of people should also be trained on hazard identification, job safety analysis, hazard abatement and control, and problem solving. Make sure that your safety programs are a step ahead of OSHA training requirements.
- Investigate carefully: Investigate on worksite accidents and near misses and communicate these incidents to relevant team members and rectify the problem. In case of accidents or fatal incidents, start investigating and get a full picture of what happened and what led to the accident. Once you have determined causal factors, recommend corrective actions to prevent recurrence.
- Keep your records safe: Make sure to keep a record of the effectiveness of the safety programs. Take note of safety related reports and events, identify trends and make improvements. Examine these records on a quarterly or yearly basis to know the effectiveness of your safety program. Consider keeping records on reports of injury, OSHA 300 forms, employee training records, safety inspection reports, accident investigations, job safety analysis and minutes from safety committee meetings.
You can conduct meetings related to a safe work culture and provide a favorable workspace for your employees. The meetings can be recorded and transcribed with the help of a digital transcription agency and the transcripts distributed among the employees to keep them informed about the new measures taken to ensure safe working conditions.
