The Importance of Safety Protocols

Providing safe working environments is important for companies, as it decreases worker injuries and accidents. However, the safety guidelines set up by a company only work if everyone takes them seriously.
A proactive approach is far better than a reactive one — fixing issues after they happen. This is why reporting workflows should be a part of every workplace safety program.
Training
A strong safety protocol starts with clear training. Employees must know the specific risks and how to manage them for your business to operate safely.
Safety training gets employees engaged, and engaged employees create safer work environments. A good safety program will also help prevent workplace injuries, illnesses, and even deaths. Injuries and illness can halt production, increase costs, and lower employee morale.
Training for safety protocols should be built into your company's employee onboarding process, and it should be conducted on a regular basis. This not only keeps workers alert, but it ensures that the processes are up-to-date and that there are no changes to equipment or materials.
Your training should cover the results of a job hazard analysis, and it should include safe operating parameters that are documented in the written procedure. It's important to keep in mind that the process limits may change as you conduct further research and experiment with different variables. The new operating parameters must be communicated to everyone working on the procedure, and your training should reflect these changes.
In addition to identifying hazards, your safety training should teach workers how to report them. This includes reporting a hazardous condition to supervisors or a designated safety committee representative, wearing required personal protective equipment, and participating in safety meetings and activities. It's also crucial to train managers on how to respond to reports of hazards so that they can avoid discouraging workers from bringing up concerns.
Hazard Review
Hazard review is an important part of the process of ensuring that safe procedures are developed and documented. Hazard identification may be performed formally using job safety analyses, surveys or inspections or informally through conversations with workers and supervisors. In addition to recognizing hazards, it is necessary to determine what control measures are needed to minimize those hazards and risks.
The hazard review process should include discussion of all aspects of the work including equipment, the physical environment, the ability of people to perform the task and the interaction between these factors. It is helpful to have a team for the review that includes people familiar with the procedure as well as those who are not - this way there is both an experienced eye and a fresh view of what can go wrong.
Input for the hazard review should also come from sources outside the laboratory such as Material Safety Data Sheets provided by chemical manufacturers, self-inspection reports and accident/incident investigation data. This information should be analyzed to determine what is known about the physical and health hazards of the work, the toxicity level of chemicals, the risk of flammability/explosion/reactivity and the need for engineering controls, administrative controls and personal protective equipment. This information can then be ranked or prioritized to determine which hazards need to be addressed with the most urgency.
Written Safety Protocols
The health and safety of employees should be a priority for all businesses. Whether you work in an industry where there are a lot of hazards, such as manufacturing and the construction sector or you have more general health and safety concerns, like noise pollution, restricted visibility and the dangers of working from home, it is important to take all necessary precautions to protect your team members from potential harm on the job.
One of the most critical aspects of any safety program is creating and implementing written protocols to guide your staff through complicated and potentially dangerous procedures. These are often underappreciated, but they have the power to prevent a number of accidents and even disasters from occurring in the workplace.
Protocols are often created using the results of a hazard review and include steps that mitigate risks and protect the worker while performing a specific task. For example, if you are working with hazardous materials, your protocol will likely recommend a lock-out procedure for equipment that needs to be shut down for maintenance or repairs.
These safety rules will also often specify safe operating parameters, which are the limits within which the process can safely be conducted. This ensures that you can change certain variables, such as substituting chemicals or changing concentrations and amounts of solvents, without having to re-do a full hazard review and rewrite your safety protocols.
Reporting
In addition to meeting the minimum requirements of your regulator, incident reports are an excellent way to learn more about safety-related issues that may affect staff and other stakeholders. For example, a reported incident can highlight gaps in staff scheduling that could result in delayed care, or the need for additional training to mitigate potential risks arising from that specific area of work.
Incorporate incident reporting into your overall safety protocols by implementing a specific time frame within which any adverse, unexpected or awareness-related event must be reported. This will help ensure that witnesses and involved individuals can recall the details of an incident with enough clarity to fill out a report form accurately.
Fall detect Near-miss reports can also be a great way to identify potential hazards or risks that may be overlooked or underestimated. Having an effective system in place for identifying and communicating near-miss incidents can provide valuable insight into your company’s safety operations and prevent any accidents from occurring.
Injuries that aren’t reported can lead to costly delays in medical treatment or a lack of access to the right equipment for a job. Developing and following internal protocols for reporting injuries is essential to ensuring that any injured workers can get the right care quickly. SHEQSY’s lone worker software includes customizable pre-start forms that allow managers to gather important safety information from their lone employees before they start a shift.