What Are The Effective Steps For Worker Protection ?

Topic: Safety Management

 
Effective Steps For Worker Protection

All employer / organization have to keep two most important safety goals in their mind :

1. Protect your employees as they perform their duties.
2. Comply with OHS regulations that apply to your workplace.

These two goals must be considered for all phases of your operations, but they are clearly paramount in the case of PPE. As the name clearly states, the purpose of the regulation is employee protection,and OSH spells out exactly how this protection must be achieved.

1. Hazard assessment.

OSH standard says that employers must “assess the workplace to determine if hazards are present, or are likely to be present, which necessitate the use of personal protective equipment.”

Think head-to-toe protection and be sure to consider all the hazards— falling objects, chemical exposures, flying objects, sharp objects, and rolling or pinching objects—as well as all the protections— hard hats, safety glasses and goggles, respirators, gloves, safety shoes, and other clothing and equipment. The better you identify and understand the impact of specific hazards, the better able you will be to take the next step and select the most appropriate PPE.

2. Equipment selection.

OSH standard also says that if such hazards are present—or are likely to be—you must:

• Select, and have affected employees use, the types of PPE that will protect them from the hazards you have identified.
• Communicate selection decisions to employees.
• Select PPE that fits each affected employee properly.

OSH states that PPE, with only a few exceptions, must be provided by the employer at no cost to the employee. The exceptions are as follows:

• Non-specialty safety-toe protective footwear (including steel-toe shoes or steel-toe boots), provided the employer permits such items to be worn off the job site
• Non-specialty prescription safety eye-wear, provided the employer permits such items to be worn off the job site
• Shoes or boots with built-in metatarsal protection that the employee chooses instead of metatarsal guards provided by the employer
• If required provide Logging boots

Hazard assessment and equipment selection—the first two steps— are actually the easy part. The hard part is encouraging employees to actually use the PPE. The next two steps—training and follow-up— present the challenge of reaching employees and communicating your important message.

3. Train employees. 

OSH standard requires organization to train employees concerning each type of PPE before allowing them to perform any work requiring its use. At a minimum, your PPE training program must include the following information:

• When PPE is necessary;
• What PPE is necessary;
• How to properly don, doff, adjust, and wear PPE;
• Limitations of the PPE; and
• Proper care, maintenance, useful life, and disposal of the PPE.

The OSH standard also require you to retrain whenever:

• Changes in the workplace render previous training obsolete;
• Changes in the types of PPE to be used render previous training obsolete; or
• Inadequacies in an employee’s knowledge or use of assigned PPE indicate that the employee has not retained the requisite understanding or skill.

4. Follow up—Reinforce and enforce.

You have to accept the fact hat no matter what you do, a few employees will still forget to use their PPE, ignore the rules, think that PPE is for wimps, or believe that accidents happen to someone else. Daily monitoring is essential to see that employees are actually wearing their PPE.

Try these suggestions to motivate your employees and keep your PPE program from going down the drain:

• Use a behavioral approach. As you walk around the department every day, give employees positive feedback for using PPE.
• Make it easy to get and exchange PPE. If it’s a hassle for employees to get PPE or exchange damaged or worn articles for new ones, they probably won’t bother and will opt for just not using it.
• Recognize and reward employees for using PPE. At safety meetings, praise employees for using PPE.
• Recognize proper use of PPE in performance appraisals. Be sure that employees realize that this will be part of their evaluations.
• Enforce PPE policies. Use discipline, if necessary, as a last resort to show employees you are serious about their wearing assigned PPE.

Like any other program, your PPE program should be reviewed periodically to make sure it still meets your company’s needs and OSH requirements. Following the four essential steps, however, should also give you confidence that you are complying with OSH regulations and are doing all that is possible to keep your employees safe.