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The Occupational Safety and Health Act is regulated by the authorities and includes requirements for ensuring safety and health at the workplace. Failure to comply with this obligation can lead to legal consequences, such as possible imprisonment, serious fines, weighty compensation payments, or even permanent company closure.
Below, is a brief overview of OSHA's Act of 1970:
With the help of an occupational health and safety checklist, the implementation of safety practices within a company is attainable. Responsible employees keep better track of accidents as well as the overall health situation. This ensures compliance with safety regulations as well as keeping flawless documentation.
In this article you will find all the important information and practical tips on the subject of health and safety at work.
1. Factors that affect occupational safety and health
2. Strategy for improved occupational health and safety
3. People responsible for workplace safety
4. Occupational safety non-compliance
5. Dangers lurking in the office: the top 6 risks.
6. List of the top most risky jobs
7. Digital checklists and questionnaires
Occupational safety is not only an obligation for employers; they also have a moral responsibility to their staff. Damage avoidance should, therefore, always be considered the company’s highest priority. To do this, occupational safety specialists, company doctors, and safety officers should always keep these in mind when evaluating and implementing safety measures. Factors must first be distinguished between those that affect mental health, and those that affect physical health.
The following definitions will help you as an employer to understand the scope of your responsibilities:
Labor protection includes measures to prevent accidents at the workplace and work-related health hazards, including measures to make work more humane. It stipulates that these measures are first and foremost made possible by technical and organizational means independent of employees. The six most relevant preventive means are:
Psychological stress at work should receive as much attention as the aforementioned physical factors. Noise, poor room climate, and stress with colleagues can have a psychologically stressful effect on employee. Other stress factors can include a workload, working hours, or inadequate managerial qualifications. All of these psychological stresses must be counteracted.
While occupational safety and health define certain measures to ensure security at work, the overall objective of these measures is what is known as occupational safety. These regulations and structures, which ensure the safety of employees, are explained in more detail below.
The six key means of structuring the workplace to ensure the health and safety of staff have already been identified. You can now find out which specific duties you have as an employer to fulfill in order to ensure occupational safety:
1. Risk Assessment
The job safety analyses (JSA) efforts in your company start with a comprehensive and regular assessment of the workplace risks. What are the risks and hazards in the workplace and during work processes? How can these be stopped or minimized?
A detailed evaluation and analysis of the working environment allow safe work processes to be defined and structural changes and corrective measures to be implemented. These should never be individual corrections. Safety should always be continuously reviewed as the highest priority goal.
2. Sensitization of Employees
An additional duty of employers is to check that employees comply with safety practices. While employers can provide comprehensive training and, if necessary, equip personnel with personal protective equipment (PPE), it is ultimately up to the employees themselves to ensure that they carry out the prescribed work properly. As an employer, you are, therefore, obliged to check that employees comply with safety practices and inform them regularly about risks, dangers, and changes in procedures, etc.
3. First Aid Help
After all, not only preventative measures are sufficient to ensure occupational safety. In case of an emergency, it is important to be prepared. For this purpose, safety officers must be trained in first aid practices, and a complete first aid kit must be available at all times. The completeness of the first-aid kit and the competence of the safety officers should be checked regularly. Additionally, there should be an emergency action plan along with the regular practice of emergency drills.
Employers are primarily responsible for occupational health and safety within the company. Therefore, the structural assurance of safety practices and a decent working environment is their responsibility and can be implemented by safety teams and responsible persons. As already mentioned, it is expressly necessary in addition to risk assessments and the establishment of safe work processes to carry out regular checks on compliance with these regulations through staff training, provision of PPE, etc.
As long as personnel have been sufficiently trained and sensitized to risks and dangers, individual employees are responsible for the proper execution of their work. If an employee refuses to take safety concerns into consideration, then this is a sufficient reason for a warning. Repeated misconduct should also lead to the dismissal of the employee.
The office as a workplace initially appears to be a relatively harmless and risk-free environment, but there are a number of aspects to consider in an office risk assessment:
The following work is one of the most dangerous technical working environments in terms of health and safety and is increasingly regulated by the state. These jobs require strict adherence to safety practices because basic risk cannot be avoided as it’s inherent to the position:
Paper-based methods in occupational safety and health can be time-consuming and difficult to keep track of. By using Lumiform's mobile app, paper documents can be digitized and workflows can be automated to facilitate data collection and documentation.
Safety inspections are conveniently completed on-site with the digital tool via smartphone or tablet - online or offline. Issues are reported in the blink of an eye while the inspection is still in progress and quickly assigned to responsible colleagues. The easy communication with all team members makes it possible to improve internal processes and solve occurring occupational health and safety incidents up to four times faster.
Use Lumiform to improve health and safety at work and reap the following benefits:
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