The following are 10 keys to accident prevention:
- Ownership. Give employees responsibility for planning and conducting inspections, for analyzing their own data on work hazards, and for designing safety checklists.
- Goals. Set clear standards for workplace behavior—and enforce them.
- Leadership. Set an example. Make sure you, personally, take necessary steps to prevent accidents. That means wearing proper PPE and taking the same precautions as your workers. Be on the lookout for potential hazards and point them out to your workers.
- Involvement. Use every opportunity to encourage employees to play an active role in workplace safety and accident prevention. If you see a hazard, do more than just correct it. Use it as a learning experience to help workers become more alert and more sensitive to potential danger on the job.
- Understanding. Emphasize that hazards put employees’ personal health and safety at risk. Understanding the “why” of safety is a strong motivator.
- Commitment. Work to get commitment to the idea that safety is a number one priority from every one of your employees.
- Competence. Train employees well so that they have the information and develop the skills they need to work safely and avoid accidents
- Feedback. Praise employees who identify and correct hazards or who report problems they can’t fix.
- Persistence. Remember that accident prevention is an ongoing challenge. It’s something you have to focus on every day, always improving, always setting new safety objectives, and always making steady progress toward achieving them.
- Responsiveness. Make sure you respond promptly to identified hazards and take immediate steps to correct them.
