Tips to Preventing Losses and Controlling Costs

Hire the right people for the job. Workplace safety begins with safe hiring practices. Ensure potential candidates have the right experience and training for the position. Conduct background checks to validate a candidate's ability to perform job functions safely and effectively-investigate credit reports, criminal background, worker’s compensation claim history, drug and alcohol history, physical ability and more (subject to applicable laws and regulations).

Clearly define employee functions. Comprehensive documentation of the roles and responsibilities for each position helps you make better hiring decisions, utilize resources in the safest, most efficient way possible, and get injured workers back on the job quicker.

Create a culture of safety–starting at the top. Studies show that the more committed to workplace safety management is, the less injuries happen. Document policies and procedures for worker, security and fleet safety. Identify risks, and create strategies to mitigate them. Distribute policies to all employees, and ensure each are adequately trained on safe operational procedures.

Establish safety committees. No one better understands how to keep working conditions safe than the people on the job. Empower employees at all levels to get involved, providing easy ways to report safety concerns and provide input on how to make operating procedures safer.

Adapt ergonomic processes. Better workplace design can help minimize job-related injury or chronic illness. Whenever possible, engineer workstations, tools, machines and operational processes to fit the task to the worker.

Manage and analyze incidents, then adjust accordingly. Not all injuries can be avoided. Establishing procedures for reporting, responding to and documenting injuries when they do occur is key. Analyze the data. Remove identified hazards. Change processes found to commonly cause injuries. Revise strategies to improve incident response in the future.