How to Create a Safety Program

Your OH&S policy is your written commitment to protect health and safety in the workplace.  It doesn’t need to be long or complicated – it just needs to make sense for your business and your workers.

Your policy should:

• state that you are going to take all reasonable measures to protect your workers from illness and injury,
• say how you will protect workers (for example, by providing training, proper supervision, proper equipment, and enforcement of safe work procedures),
• outline responsibilities for workers at all levels in your workplace, including managers and supervisors,
• be signed by a senior manager/supervisor or owner,
• be reviewed and updated every year.

Sample policy:

ABC Company will make every effort to provide a healthy and safe work environment. All supervisors and employees must be dedicated to reducing the risk of injury and illness.

As an employer, ABC Company is ultimately responsible for the health and safety of our employees.

Supervisors will be held accountable for the health and safety of employees under their supervision. Supervisors also are responsible to ensure that machinery and equipment are safe, and that employees follow established safe work practices and procedures.

Employees must protect their own health and safety and that of others by following the law, and the company's safe work practices and procedures.

It is in the best interest of all of us to consider health and safety in every activity. Commitment to health and safety must be demonstrated at every level of this company. President ABC Company

Make sure all workers read the policy, understand it, and commit to it. Be sure they also understand that safety is a shared responsibility. Learn more about the Internal Responsibility System here.

• 5 to 19 workers: you must have a health and safety representative who is chosen by your workers. This representative must not be a manager or supervisor.

• 20+ workers: you must establish a joint occupational health and safety committee (JOHSC).

  The JOHSC is made up of:

  • Workers - people who do the work and therefore have in-depth practical knowledge

    AND

  • Managers - people who have a larger overview of company policies and procedures

The representative and the JOHSC have similar responsibilities.

• Help develop and set up health and safety programs.
• Promote safety awareness to all workers.
• Review worker complaints or suggestions about safety or health.
• Inspect the workplace for hazards and suggest ways to control them.
• Make recommendations to management for ways to improve safety.
• Take part in injury and incident investigations.
• Monitor whether safety programs are working.
• Keep minutes of all meeting and highlight any safety recommendations.

Your program puts your policy into action and depends on your company’s size, type of work, and risk levels. Be sure to involve workers when you develop it.

Your program should:

• set measurable goals,
• identify, assess, and control hazards to keep injuries from happening (more in step 4),
• identify ways to investigate and resolve incidents. When an incident does occur, learn from it. Collect and analyze information. Determine how it could have been prevented/controlled.
• have a way to assess whether the program has reached its goals,
• be constantly improving.

Conduct workplace inspections with your JOHSC or representative on a regular basis to identify potential hazards and plan ways to reduce or control them. Look for both health hazards and safety hazards.

Use this workplace inspection checklist to clarify inspection responsibilities, plan and control inspection activities, and provide a report of inspection findings.

Some common hazards include:

People

• Not wearing the right safety gear
• Not following safety procedures

Materials

• Improper handling of hazardous materials

Equipment

• Missing or broken machine guards or barriers
• Defective equipment
• Wrong tools or equipment being used for the job
• Missing or insufficient warning systems

Environment

• Poor walkway maintenance
• Overcrowding
• Poor air circulation
• Poor lighting
• Extreme temperature or noise levels
• Untidy workplace

Process

• Problems created by the design, pace and type of work

Give your workers the knowledge and tools they need to make smart and safe decisions on the job. Every worker should have the right training that allows them do their job safely. And that training should be updated regularly.

Managers and supervisors should also be safety role models by always wearing the right safety equipment and responding right away when a worker brings a safety issue to their attention.

Getting workers back to work as quickly and safely possible should be part of your safety program. Learn more here.