Injury and illness prevention program

The injury and Illness Prevention program provides many of the basic priorities commonly utilized by safety and health professionals. As identified by OSHA, the six major elements of an effective injury and illness prevention program include... 

An injury and illness prevention program is a proactive process to help employers find and fix workplace hazards before workers are hurt. We know these programs can be effective at reducing injuries, illnesses, and fatalities. Many workplaces have already adopted such approaches, for example as part of OSHA s cooperative programs. Not only do these employers experience dramatic decreases in workplace injuries, but they often report a transformed workplace culture that can lead to higher productivity and quality, reduced turnover, reduced costs, and greater employee satisfaction. 

The occupational safety and health community uses various names to describe systematic approaches to reducing injuries and illnesses in the workplace. Consensus and international standards use the term Occupational Health and Safety Management Systems OSHA currently uses the term Injury and Illness Prevention Programs and others use Safety and Health Programs to describe these types of systems. Regardless of the title, they all systematically address workplace safety and health hazards on an ongoing basis to reduce the extent and severity of work-related injuries and illnesses. 

An enhanced focus on prevention is needed to bring these numbers down. To accomplish this, an effective, flexible, commonsense tool is available that can dramatically reduce the number and severity of workplace injuries and illnesses the injury and illness prevention program. This tool helps employers find hazards and fix them before injuries, illnesses or deaths occur. It helps employers meet their obligation under the OSH Act to furnish to each of his employees employment and a place of employment which are free from recognized hazards that are causing or are likely to cause death or serious physical harm to his employees. It also helps employers avoid the significant costs associated with injuries and illnesses in the workplace. 

HOW DOES AN INJURY AND ILLNESS PREVENTION PROGRAM WORK ... 

When it comes to injury and illness prevention programs, every business is different, and one size certainly does not fit all. Employers who implement injury and illness prevention programs scale and adapt these elements to meet the needs of their organizations, depending on size, industry sector or complexity of operations. 

The main goal of injury and illness prevention programs is to prevent workplace injuries, illnesses and deaths, the suffering these events cause workers, and the financial hardship they cause both workers and employers. 

Workplace incidents cause an enormous amount of physical, financial and emotional hardship for individual workers and their families. Combined with insufficient workers compensation benefits and inadequate medical insurance, woikplace injuries and illnesses can not only cause physical pain and suffering but also loss of employment and wages, burdensome debt, inability to maintain a previous standard of living, loss of home ownership and even bankruptcy. When implemented effectively, injury and illness prevention programs can help workers and their families avoid these disruptive and sometimes calanutous impacts on their lives. 

In summary, the number and costs of workplace injuries, illnesses and fatalities are unacceptably high. Injury and illness prevention programs have been proven to help employers and society reduce the personal, financial and societal costs that injuries, illnesses and fatalities impose. As described below, the thousands of workplaces that have implemented these programs in some form have already witnessed the resulting benefits, in the form of higher efficiency, greater worker productivity and lower costs. 

WHAT IS THE EVIDENCE THAT INJURY AND ILLNESS PREVENTION PROGRAMS PROTECT WORKERS AND IMPROVE THE "BOTTOM LINE" ... 

OSHA examined the injury and illness prevention programs in eight states where the state had either required a program or provided incentives or requirements through its workers compensation programs. The successes of these state programs, which lowered injury and illness incidences by 9 percent to more than 60 percent. 

California began to require an injury and illness prevention program in 1991. Five years after this requirement began, Catifomia had a net decrease in injuries and illnesses of 19 percent. 

Colorado has a program that allows firms to adopt basic injury and illness prevention program components in return for a workers compensation premium reduction. The cumulative annual reduction in accidents was 23 percent and the cumulative reduction in accident costs was between 58 and 62 percent. 

Hawaii began to require employers to have injury and illness prevention programs in 1985. The net reduction in injuries and illnesses was 20.7 percent. 

OSHA also examined fatality rates and found that California, Hawaii and Washington, with their mandatory injury and illness prevention program requirements, had workplace fatality rates as much as 31 percent below the national average in 2009. 

This body of research, combined with studies of individual companies (see boxes, below, with Case Studies of Programs Implemented under OSHA s Voluntary Protection Program (VPP) and Safety and Health Achievement Recognition Program (SHARP)) danonstrate clearly that injury and illness prevention programs are effective at the establishment level in dramatically reducing risk of workplace injury. This effect has also been detected in state-wide comparisons. 

THE DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE EMBRACES INJURY AND ILLNESS PREVENTION PROGRAMS... 

There are at least two industry consensus standards for injury and illness prevention programs. The American National Standards Institute (ANSI) and American Industrial Hygiene Association (AIHA) have published a voluntary consensus standard, ANSI/AIHA ZIO—2005 Occupational Safety and Health Management Systems (ANSI/AIHA 2005). The Occupational Health and Safety Assessment Series (OHSAS) Project Group, a consortium of selected Registrars, national standards bodies, professional associations and research institutes, has produced a similar document, OHSAS 18001—2007 Occupational Health and Safety Management Systems (OHSAS Project Group 2007). These consensus-based standards have been widely accepted in the world of commerce and adopted by many businesses on a voluntary basis. 

Injury and illness prevention programs are based on proven managerial concepts that have been widely used in industry to bring about improvements in quality, environment and safety, and health performance. Effective injury and illness prevention programs emphasize top-level ownership of the program, participation by employees, and a find and fix approach to workplace hazards. 

Injury and illness prevention programs need not be resource-intensive and can be adapted to meet the needs of any size organization. 

OSHA believes that adoption of injury and illness prevention programs based on simple, sound, proven principles will help millions of U.S. businesses improve their compliance with existing laws and regulations, decrease the incidence of workplace injuries and illnesses, reduce costs (including significant reductions in workers compensation premiums) and enhance their overall business operations. 

---