Adopting a Safety Culture - Essay Example

22nd February Safety program Based on the need to improve the profitability of a firm and the performance of the employees, it is vital for any organisation to come up with an appropriate safety program. A safety program entails adopting a safety culture that is focused at minimizing occurrence of accidents in the workplace. Four major aspects that Plant XYZ manufactures safety action plan will take into consideration includes creating a change, safety and health payoffs, management system and S& H integration as well as doing a safety and health check up. As indicated by the Plant XYZ 1998 estimated direct and indirect costs, the company incurred $984,000 in the first four months. This figure is high and therefore this action plan is focused at putting in place effective measure to enable the company attain the OSHA VPP Star Certification in 2 years in addition to reducing incidents rates by 50%. Commitment by managers The first step that I will include in my action plan as the safety manager is to ensure that manager’s commitment towards safety is maintained. It is worth to note that the safety committee is keen on maintaining safety responsibilities. As a safety manager my main role will to first understand why accidents occur within the company premises and how the safety committee dealt with past cases of accidents. This will be followed by studying all the minutes of the meetings held by safety committee prior to my appointment. To ensure that all the employees are conversant with the safety policy, my action plan will entail establishing safety rules that will be presented to safety committee in 2 weeks time. Being accountable One of the major causes of the increased number of accidents in 1998 was due to lack of accountability by the employees. In order to make our employees accountable for their safety, I will ensure that safety responsibilities of the employees are indicated in the job description. Additionally, the management team should allocate more funds to educate employees on how to maintain safety during their duties. This will involve undertaking training programs twice per month through the use of trainers from the OSHA Technical Support and Emergency Management team. It will be the duty of the supervisors to ensure that employees who divert from the safety measures are disciplined in a friendly way and not by sacking or threats. Employee’s involvement As indicated by the OSHA XYZ registered lost workday injury and illness (LWDII) rate of 8.1. This may have been caused by lack of employee involvement. To address this issue, this action plan aims ensuring that all the employees are involved in the safety program. This will be achieved by providing a feedback system that will make the employees review and suggest ways of improving safety within the work place. Such reviews will be conducted at the end of every month and necessary action taken by the safety committee (Maine Department of Labor 24). Additionally, employees will be given an opportunity to participate during safety committee meetings that will be held once per month under the leadership of the human resources manager assisted by safety manager. Employee involvement will be vital especially in lowering the rate of absenteeism thus resulting to increased level of production and more sales. Controlling hazards Control of hazards is a key aspect of the safety program. Based on the challenging tasks that XYZ employees undertake, majority of them become exhausted an aspect that causes recklessness and lack of concentration leading to accidents. To address this problem, this action plan will emulate an administrative control ways that are focused at reducing exposure to hazards (United States Department of Labor 6). Some of the ways that the company will adopt includes rotation of workers on hourly basis, rest breaks and initiating exercise programs after work. In addition, employees will be at liberty to report any hazard to their supervisors who will then respond to such issues in a timely manner. As depicted earlier, employees will also be trained on preparedness to emergencies an aspect that is aimed at reducing the number of accidents by 50%. Accident investigations One of the major causes of reoccurrence of accidents is lack of adequate investigation of their causes. Even though it is not entirely possible to prevent near-miss incidents and accidents, this action plan will entail undertaking thorough investigation in case of an accident. In this way, the possibility of reoccurrence of such accidents will be reduced. In this regard, the safety committee will establish an investigating team made up of three members that will specialize in establishing the causes of an accident and then report to the safety committee within 2 weeks. Training and educating employees Plant XYZ safety program aims at maintaining low three-year-average-total-cases incident rate in order to achieve VPP Star Certification in 2 years. This action plan therefore, suggest the introduction of a monthly training program that will expose employees and managers to safety and health rules, dealing with emergencies, identifying and controlling hazards, leadership and how to use safety gadgets such as fire extinguishers among others. Such training will result to three major positive impacts. First, employees will know how avoid their exposure hazards (Vermont OSHA 8). Secondly, all the stakeholders will understand their responsibilities as far as safety and health in the work place is concerned. Thirdly, employees will easily identify hazards in the work places. Reviewing and evaluating Reviewing and evaluation of the safety program is prudent aspect of this action plan. In this way, the security committee will identify the weaknesses and strengths thus putting in place the necessary strategies to curb any deviation. Some of the major aspects that will be covered during evaluation include reviewing the accidents reports, reviewing the employee’s contributions and the implications of the security program on the company sales. Conclusion As indicated by this action plan, Plant XYZ will attain the VPP certification in 2 years based on three principles. First, the company has safety committee comprising of all departmental managers as well Ms.Smythe, the front office manager and executive secretary. Secondly, the company has maintained a safety program that will achieve its objectives through this action plan. Thirdly, this action plan will result to significantly reducing three-year-average-total-cases incident rate (United States Department of Labor 11). Additionally, the use of training and education as well as employees involvement will ensure that the rate of absenteeism and turnover are lowered thus ensuring that the sales level is increased. Works Cited Maine Department of Labor. SafetyWorks! Available from http://www.safetyworksmaine.com/safe_workplace/safety_management/index.html. Retrieved on February 22, 2013. United States Department of Labor. OSHA Safety & Health Management Systems eTool. Available from http://www.osha.gov/SLTC/etools/safetyhealth/index.html. Retrieved on February 22, 2013. United States Department of Labor. OSHA Voluntary Protection Programs (VPP)..Available from http://www.osha.gov/dcsp/vpp/index.html. Retrieved on February 22, 2013. Vermont OSHA. Developing an Effective Safety and Health Program. Available from http://labor.vermont.gov/Portals/0/WP%20Safety/developingshprogram.pdf. Retrieved on February 22, 2013. Read More