Stretching Your Safety Program’s Budget In A Tight Economy

With the current economy in turmoil, companies are cutting expenses and tightening budgets across the board. Safety programs are certainly not immune from these cutbacks but there are things you can do as a safety trainer to keep from getting the dreaded axe.

When times get tight, there’s no question that a lot of programs within a company can be greatly affected. Some are trimmed down, and some are dropped outright if they don’t appear to help the bottom line of profits and loss in a clear and direct way.

For some executives, safety training can fall into this grey area of necessity and value and it’s often one of the programs with a bullseye on it. But cutting safety programs can be a risky venture.

Being a safety professional, you know perhaps better than anyone, that with the upset in the economy, the threat of job loss, and other distractions, a worker’s ability to stay focused is greatly challenged. Simply put, workers get distracted with all of this chaos around them and distractions often result in accidents.
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Safety Compliance Tests and Audits

Since the Occupational Safety and Health Act was passed in the United States in 1970, it has been the responsibility of OSHA (The Occupational Safety and Health Administration) to administrate the OSH Act and protect the working public in America from malady at work.

In partnership with national organizations, OSHA’s main responsibilities are to write policies regarding safety in the workplace, to educate employers and employees on these safety standards, and to ensure that companies understand and comply with these requirements. Nearly every industrialized country in the world has a similar governing body whose responsibility it is to protect its country’s workers and ensure safety compliance by employers, such as the Centre for Occupational Health and Safety in Canada.
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Training For Trips And Tumbles

According to the Department of Labor (DOL) falls at work are a major cause of death, triggering eight per cent of occupational fatalities from trauma. The dominance of such injuries is elicited through risks posed by equipment, practices, and unsafe surroundings, such as slippery surfaces. All such hazards require programs involving fall protection training and education.

One of the most affected industry from falls is the construction industry. The most commonly injured part of the body in these incidents is the back. This high number of injuries has been associated with faulty equipment, human error, and systems.
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Improving Forklift Safety Training

Forklift safety is big industry concern for OSHA (The Occupational Safety and Health Administration), the governmental arm responsible for ensuring workplace safety for American workers. One of the reasons is that so many industries and businesses, even small ones, use forklifts, or “powered industrial trucks,” on the job.

Because there is so much potential for accident/injury on and around forklifts (OSHA estimates tens of thousands forklift injuries occur every year on the job), OSHA, its cooperative industry partners, and other workplace safety specialists, have produced a number of resources to help employers make sure that their forklifts are operated in a safe and secure manner.
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Safety Training Systems Bring Consistency

Safety training systems induce practices that enhance both standards and performance at work. Methods and practices that are part of safety training systems, such as Occupational Safety Training Systems have improved the poor record of the construction industry standards. Factors that encourage implementing safety measures involve recognizing errors as part of human capacity limitations in terms of memory or even information processing. Different approaches to safe practices at work during production are inspired by natural human tendency to employ the least effort and can provoke deviations from safe work methods.

Various types of accident causations have been found to be brought about by human error in both construction and manufacturing industry. There are various implications of subjectivity in determining causes of accidents and in adequate explanations of event descriptions. Human errors cannot be eliminated as human beings adapt their behavior in the course of freedom given to them to modify procedures. While we are pushed to accept risk at work it is left up to our individual judgment or arrangement how to avoid various accidents. Work systems engage insight into the classification of boundaries that set acceptable performance regardless of work procedures.
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Online Safety Courses The System Of Choice

Online safety courses offer advantages of better exploration of interpersonal interaction. Shared knowledge encourages development of new perspectives while engaging those who are inactive and assuring at the same time intellectual safety. Such findings have been gathered in a qualitative study by published by Human Resource Development Quarterly (Githen, 2007).

Online courses can provide training and freedom to explore individual learning needs. Fatburger staff uses website to learn about food safety, which is then used as part of evaluation while often being the only way to meet tight work schedules. Online food safety courses assure better health awareness.
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