An effective workplace safety program is imperative in healthcare settings to ensure the well-being of workers and hold down costs related to worker injury.
In a study released last year by Harvard Business School on the impact of government safety inspections on workplace insurance claims, workers' compensation costs and overall employer savings, researchers found:
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- 9.4 percent drop in injury claims at workplaces the four years following an inspection
- 26 percent average savings on workers' compensation costs, compared to similar, non-inspected companies
- $355,000 average savings for an employer (large or small) as a result of an inspection by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA)
- $6 billion estimated savings to employers nationwide
- “no evidence that these improvements came at the expense of employment, sales, credit ratings or firm survival”
For a workplace safety program to be effective, three factors must be in place, said Todd Hohn, a certified safety professional who is the global director of UL Workplace Health and Safety, a workplace safety solutions company based in Tennessee. There must be management buy-in, a documented correlation between safety incidents and productivity and an overall culture of safety in the organization.
To promote a culture of safety, Hohn said, safety training is key.
“Safety training done well is a blended approach,” Hohn said. “It could involve instructor-led training, e-learning, hands-on demonstrations – different ways for employees to learn.”
Most importantly, the training can’t be a one-time effort. The practices and policies of the training program need to be reinforced on the job so that employees know the organization is serious about safeguarding them, Hohn said. And it doesn’t hurt to get employee feedback.
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“Get workers involved in the process,” he said. “Have them help you define what changes look like, and what solutions could or should be.”
“Training is often thought of to be a passive effort, but it shouldn’t be,” said Jack Dennerlein, who teaches ergonomics and safety at Northeastern University in Boston. “If employees know that as an employer you are committed to (safety), it becomes a huge incentive for them to get involved.”
All workplace safety efforts hinge on management support, said Dennerlein. The support can be general – implementing workplace safety programs – or hands-on. Nothing tells employees that the program has support better than managers showing up for a training session, he said.