People often enjoy complainung about excessive government regulations that damage a company’s ability to make a profit. The fact of the matter is that some regulations are critically important and do a lot more good than harm. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has a number of regulations that have improved workplace safety around the country. These rules have reduced worker injuries from nearly 11 (10.9) per each one hundred workers in 1972 to approximately 3.4 per every hundred in 2011. From fall protection training Phoenix Az to New York, fewer workers are hurt due to falls, for instance.
OSHA’s main policy for fall protection can be summed up in three words: plan, provide and train. What does this mean for you and your business?
Step 1: Plan
The first step is to draft a fall protection plan. You should have someone at your company identify all of the risk areas for your employees. Care should then be taken to develop a strategy for dealing with any and all of the problem areas. This plan should include what steps are being taken and what equipment will be needed in all areas of the workplace and for each job. Specific individuals need to be assigend the tasks of procureing trhe proper equipment and making sure all employees are trained in its proper usage. The costs of safety equipment should always be factored into the overall budget for any project. Different jobs that are completed at different heights may need specific equipment. Workers whose job has them 25 feet or more off of the ground can benefit from certain kinds of safety euipment that might not be needed for workers who are at a height of only four feet, for example. Make sure your plan is posted and easily visible to your staff.
Step 2: Provide
As an employer, it is your resonsibility to make sure your staff is supplied with the correct safety and fall protection equipment including items such as rigging supplies and lifting gear. While a height of six feet may not seem like a lot, workers who fall from this level can be seriously injured. Experts who provide fall protection training Phoenix AZ say that workers who are at a height of four feet or more should be supplied with the correct safety and fall prevention gear such as ladders, scaffolding, nets and even harnasses designed at preventing falls. Each site and workplace is different and there is no “one size fits all” solution. It is imperitive that companies take care in devidi gn their fall prevention plans and are equally diligent in implementing those plans. Taking the proper care when devising and carrying out worker safety plans goes a long way in showing employees that their safety is important to management.
Step 3: Train
No safety equipment can be considered effective if the employees who use it have not been trained on how to do so properly. Fall protection courses should be offered on a routine basis. A harnass, for example, is only effective at preventing workplace falls, when it is used the way the manufacturer suggests. This means that all new hires need to be trained how to use all of the safety (and other) equipment they will need to use to do their job. Periodically you should offer refresher classes on how to operate and maintain all of your equipment. That state of the art harnass system will do no one any good if it starts to fall apart. Fall protection training Phoenix AZ experts recommend workers receive lots of training on both the equipment they use but also how to identify hazards and problem area before they become problems. For example, they should be able to recognize when a piece of equipment, such as is on the verge of failure so they can repair or replace is before anyone is injured.
Workplace safety should be the concern of everyone you have working for you. Fall protection training Phoenix AZ experts recommend sending new employees and other staff to OSHA approved trainings. While it mat seem that some of the regulations go overboard, they are really written to protect you and the people working for you from preventible injuries. This can really help your bottom line.
