Safety Promotion to Prevent Errors

In former years, many efforts to promote safe practices consisted almost entirely of a campaign that alerted employees to the hazards in their workplace and urged them to work safely. The modem concept is that hazards that cannot be eliminated should be controlled, first by design and then by procedural means. Procedural means consist in relying on employees to perform tasks properly and safely. Use of procedures is a less desirable means of accident prevention than is good design but because all hazards cannot be eliminated by design companies rely on the safe practices of their workers. To ensure safe work practices by their employees, companies must have an effective safety promotion plan. 

Safety regulations are as old as the first human communities. Any place where people worked in groups, they developed rules to protect themselves while they worked. Go to any third world country where there is no OSHA, and you will find humans have created safety rules to protect themselves. These rules are codes of conduct to avoid injury and damage. Employers have been cited and fined under the OSHA Act where employees were injured or killed because of failures to enforce safe work rules. Safety rules may have been published prohibiting horseplay yet some supervisors have routinely witnessed horseplay and failed to stop it. In such a case, when a worker is injured due to horseplay, the company may be liable to a personal injury suit. The injured worker would be entitled to Workers Compensation, plus one or more people may lose their jobs. 

After the OSHA standards went into effect in 1971, OSHA inspectors visited many plants after their unions or individuals charged that numerous imminent dangers existed. The workers in any process are the ones most aware of the hazards in their process and they want the hazards mitigated or eliminated because their lives and health are at stake. Workers are excellent sources of information about hazards. 

Their immediate supervisor or a designated experienced and knowledgeable coworker should indoctrinate the new employee further. This indoctrination should include safety topics listed here  

Hazards in the operations in which the employee will participate Safeguards that have been provided and precautionary measures to be taken against those hazards 

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