Focused on protecting the workforce’s safety and health
Making the workplace a safe place for employees while implementing sustainable practices is a multi-step process requiring right from top management commitment to employee involvement. It needs a strong safety and environment culture and also processes to ensure the efforts bear fruit. Most importantly, the processes should comply with regulatory requirements such as os OSHA Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970.
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The Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 makes employers responsible for providing a safe and healthy workplace by implementing OSHA guidelines in their organization. By being OSHA compliant, businesses can gain access to timely data that can help identify and mitigate risks and work on health and safety programs to provide a safe workplace to prevent avoidable illnesses and injuries.
Worker participation is an essential component of OSHA compliance, requiring workers’ involvement and participation in establishing, operating, evaluating, and improving workplace safety and health programs. To have an effective safety and health program, all workers:
Are encouraged to provide inputs and report safety or health concerns without any fear
Need access to information to participate effectively in the program
Have opportunities to participate in all phases of program design and implementation
Do not face retaliation when they raise safety and health concerns; report injuries, illnesses, and hazards; participate in the program, or exercise safety and health rights
Are encouraged to provide inputs and report safety or health concerns without any fear
Need access to information to participate effectively in the program
Have opportunities to participate in all phases of program design and implementation
Do not face retaliation when they raise safety and health concerns; report injuries, illnesses, and hazards; participate in the program, or exercise safety and health rights
Training is another integral part of OSHA guidelines. It acts as a tool that informs workers and managers about workplace hazards and controls so they can work more safely and be more productive. Training is also mandated as it provides workers and managers with a better understanding of the safety and health program so that they can contribute to its development and implementation. OSHA firmly believes that employee training, outreach, and education are essential to prevent work-related illnesses, injuries, and deaths.
Some of the training programs and education material recommended by OSHA include:
OSHA compliance is mandated to prevent work-related injury, create a safer work environment, and reduce the fatality rate in high-risk industries. By adhering to the recommended OSHA practices, employers and business owners understand the need for these safety guidelines as it helps: An automated solution that is aligned to the OSHA requirements such as the one from ComplianceQuest can help:
Prevent injuries, illness, or even death in the workplace
Overcome financial suffering and hardship that can affect workers, family, or even the employers
Improve workplace morale
Create favorable brand image among the community of customers and suppliers
Reduce the attrition rate
Accurate record-keeping of workplace injuries or illnesses is mandatory. All OSHA compliance requirements are likely to be carried out by the company’s HR manager. As per the guidelines, employers must report any worker fatality within eight hours and any amputation, loss of an eye, or hospitalization of a worker within 24 hours. Also, it is to be noted that since the beginning of 2019, businesses in certain high-risk industries must electronically file OSHA’s Form 300A (Summary of Work-Related Injuries and Illnesses) by March 2 of each year. Examples of these businesses include specialized freight trucking, psychiatric and substance abuse hospitals and senior care facilities, and which have at least 20 and up to 249 employees,
As part of OSHA compliance record-keeping, three OSHA forms need to be maintained:
OSHA defines a serious work-related injury or illness as:
An EHS solution such as the one from ComplianceQuest automates the reporting, documenting and prevention processes.
OSHA inspectors are called compliance safety and health officers and are experienced, well-trained industrial hygienists and safety professionals. Their role is to assure compliance with OSHA requirements and help employers and workers reduce on-the-job hazards and prevent injuries, illnesses, and deaths in the workplace. Inspections are initiated without advance notice, conducted using on-site or telephone and facsimile investigations, performed by highly trained compliance officers and scheduled based on the following priorities:
Imminent danger
Catastrophes: fatalities or hospitalizations
Targeted inspections: particular hazards, high injury rates
Follow-up inspections
OSHA inspection officer carries out three important duties during inspection – briefing the employer of the inspection, thorough examination of the site with employee interviews, and summarizing findings in a report.
The first duty of the inspection officer is to brief the employer in an opening conference where the compliance officer will explain:
Once the officer explains his part, a representative selected by the company accompanies the officer through the inspection. The compliance officer can speak with other employees as part of the inspection.
The second duty involves a thorough examination of the site with a walkthrough. As the actual inspection starts, the officer and the representatives walk through the workplace, inspecting for violations that could lead to employee injury or illness, any reported worksite injury and illness records, and the posting of the official OSHA poster. Any apparent violations that can be corrected immediately are pointed but cited in the report as part of the inspection. The officer is bound to keep witness of trade secrets confidential.
Once the walkaround inspection is complete, the compliance officer holds a closing conference to summarizing the findings in the form of a report. The agenda includes discussions about possible courses of action an employer may take following an inspection, such as an informal conference with OSHA, contesting citations, and proposed penalties. The compliance officer and employer, along with the representatives, also discuss consultation services and employee rights.
Workplace safety management is about proactively preventing incidents that put your employees at risk and ensures compliance with the OSHA guidelines. Compliance with OSHA standards includes requirements to improve fall protection, prevent exposure
Once employers focus on the safety of the employees, OSHA compliance becomes easier, and this enables:
We are an agriculture business with various types of operations with many locations spread across several states. We were seeking a safety platform that could track a wide variation of incident types, and allow our team to easily and quickly enter incidents. Lifeguard Solutions provided us with the desired safety platform. The advantage of Lifeguard Solutions is the system was very customizable to fit our business requirements. As expected, the employees entering incidents have found it very easy to enter incidents. The screens are self-explanatory so limited training was necessary for incident reporting. The dashboards and reports are customizable to display the incident data in many fashions. The Lifeguard Solutions team is always open to suggestions to improve their platform and welcome any feedback.
We look forward to utilizing several of the other applications Lifeguard Solutions has to offer to further improve the efficiency of our business.
Safeguards for Personnel Protection Checklist, OSHA Guidelines 29 CFR 1910.335
Checklist | February 17th, 2022
Machinery and Machine Guarding, OSHA Standards 29 CFR 1910.212
Checklist | February 17th, 2022
Material Handling Checklist for Warehouse Safety as per OSHA Guidelines
Checklist | January 27th, 2022
Checklist | December 30th, 2021
Connectivity across supplier, internal, logistics, and customer dashboards
Data at the core
Act as an enabler for continuous improvement
Customizable workflows, as per industry or regulatory norms
Scalability and flexibility
Easy to integrate with external ERP & CRM systems
Advantage SaaS Business Model: A real cloud-based product such as the one from ComplianceQuest provides better ROI because of its pay-per-user, per-month business model that ensures scalability, flexibility, and ease of buy-in from top management.
Data on the Move: For a quality and safety system to be effective, users must have access to next-generation features. Dashboards, mobile-based access to critical quality and safety data, quality analytics, safety management processes, security features are all key factors even from an ROI perspective. The notional cost of not enabling your users and quality and safety leaders with data on the move can be massive.
Quality & Safety Insights: As cloud-based QHSE systems evolve, we’re going to see more “suggestions” and “insights based on quality analytics,” possibly some of these driven by AI. As a safety and quality leader having anytime, anywhere, access to critical safety, quality and compliance insights can be a game-changer. This coupled with a custom safety dashboard can make all the difference to your organizational culture.
Costs in Proportion to the Scale of your Business: Last but not the least, as your organization scales, so does the cost of the EHS solution. For smaller businesses, it means lower costs when your user base is small, and the number of modules you need is less.
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