ISO 45001 - What You Need to Know

The burden of occupational injuries and diseases is significant, both for employers and the wider economy, resulting in losses from early retirements, staff absence and rising insurance premiums, not to mention overall worker productivity.

Over 6300 people die each day from work-related accidents or diseases - that’s nearly 2.3 million every year.  These are deaths that could and should have been prevented, and must be in the future. ISO 45001 was developed to do just that. 

ISO 45001 is the new standard for OSHA.  While it is in the early phases of roll out, most believe it will become the norm and it will important for companies to stay abreast of it. 

Here is a white paper from ISOfocus that will give you a very good recap of what it is, the differences from past systems, how to begin to use it, what you need to know, how it integrates with other systems and how it will be used. 

For more information on AwardSafety products or services or other white papers please contact us at awardsafetyinfo@cox.net

What are the Human Factors Causing Accidents?

Safety professionals have known for years that not all accidents are caused by humans, 

but most are.  Many factors are responsible for large number of accidents that occur in a workplace. The following is a list of some human factors that are common causes of accidents:

• Memory - Memory lapse may occur at any time
• Judgment and reasoning power - May be reduced due to many factors
• Attention - Failure to remain attentive or lack of attention
• Delayed or false sensation of the sensory organs - Failed senses that could otherwise stimulate a response to avoid the accident
• Competence - Lack of competence and experience
• Skills - Skill level of individuals is important in any accident avoidance
• Personality - Some are compromising while others are hardliner
• Attitude - Negligence, arrogance, boldness and overconfidence etc.
• Risk perception - Poor risk perception due to poor knowledge and experience
• Individual characteristics - Anger, temper, curiosity etc.

Accidents that are caused due to human factors may be prevented or reduced by the following preventative measures:

• Training and awareness
• Supervision, monitoring and controlling
• Feedback and reports
• Frequent inspections and audits
• Skill development
• Education

The human behavior model teaches us that these preventive measures are known as antecedents (or the things we put in place to avoid the accident), but experience shows us that it is the feedback and consequences that work to change behavior.  

For more information on AwardSafety products or services or other white papers please contact us at awardsafetyinfo@cox.net

Award Programs-Another Way to Promote Safety.

Safety award programs use rewards to encourage employees to follow safety protocols, work safely, and be vigilant on the job. They work for a few different reasons:  

• Rewards for a job well done fulfills our desire for acknowledgment and affirmation
• Recognition promotes worker engagement
• Rewards keep safety at the forefront of every worker's mind

 Reward programs don’t have to be costly to be effective.  In fact the incentive industry has known for years that:

A small, positive, immediate consequence has more impact on behavior than a large, future and uncertain one.

By consistently and continuously reinforcing behavior change with small amounts of awards, you will change behavior

People do things for their own reasons and needs – not yours.  If you want to motivate change, then offer awards that appeal to those needs.  Within reason, let them have what they want, not what you think they want and not what you want them to have.

With a bit of brainstorming, you can come up with ways to encourage safe behavior and reduce the rate of accidents and injuries without putting a strain on your budget. 

Regardless of how you structure your program or what awards you use, base it only on recognizing improvement in lagging indicators.  That is the only way to build a habit of safe performance that will be lasting.

For more information on AwardSafety products or services or other white papers please contact us at awardsafetyinfo@cox.net

Biggest Problems in Safety Incentive Programs

In our opinion, the single biggest problem in safety incentive programs is not setting your program goals in such a way as to motivate performance toward achieving that goal.  The fundamental challenge for anyone designing a safety incentive award program is to have a program that will produce results…or at the bottom line reduce incidents which will result in lowering costs.  That becomes the ultimate objective you want to achieve, but should not be the overt goal of the program.  The goal should be those specific work behaviors that an employee can effect on their own.  

Think about it this way…don’t tell your employees… “if you don’t have an accident we will give you an award.”  That’s actually a little silly if you think about it as no one intentionally goes out and has an accident. You really don’t change behaviors when you use reducing accidents as your goal.  But, you can change those specific behaviors that lead to accidents by rewarding the specific improved performance.  The collection of those improved performances will lead to reduced accidents. 

 The best type of reward system to design is one that gives consistent and continuous small awards to reinforce the changed behaviors.   Research has shown that these types of structures will improve results.

Don’t get caught up in thinking that the big carrot or the grand prize will drive reduced accidents, they won’t.  It is consistently using small and incremental awards for working in a safe manner that will create the habit that will provide better safety results in the long run.

This approach to safety is more long term and consistent with the long term goals of reducing accidents and keeping them low. 

For more information on AwardSafety products or services or other white papers please contact us at awardsafetyinfo@cox.net

Good Strategies to Renew a Safety Culture

While strategies to address safety and health have shifted over time, it’s always useful to take an inventory of what you’ve done, are currently doing and other ideas to focus on what might be useful in the future.

Has your commitment to safety truly been and continues to be a corporate value? And have your executives merely providing lip service to it?  Has it become just a slogan on the corporate website?  Here are some ideas you might want to use to refresh your safety culture:

• Do a complete analysis of all the important safety initiatives you used over the last couple of years, tie the results to a real ROI for each initiative and make a presentation to executive management.
• Have executives renew their commitment to  your workforce by meeting with them in small groups and recognizing them for their performance
• Renew or initiate a communications channel to the workforce including information about performance.
• Focus on housekeeping, working on reducing messy or disorganized work areas.
• Have field management work with your crews after work assignments are made to walk the site to see if there are existing hazards that need to be addresse
• Check to make sure you have been keeping things simple: don’t complicate the process. Your focus should be on safety, not the steps.
• Engage your workers: ask them for ideas to renew and refresh your approach to safety.
• If you’re using any form of behavior based safety remind your managers that it is an application of the real science of behavior change to real world problems.  It should focus on what people do, analyze why they do it, apply a research-supported intervention strategy to improve what they do, and then recognize and reward the improved performance. 

 For more information on AwardSafety products or services or other white papers please contact us at awardsafetyinfo@cox.net