7 Steps 2 Safety

[Erminia Scharnberg]

Stairwaysare a very common walking surface in most workplaces. Falls from stairs may lead to serious injuries or even death. Employers must take measures in their workplaces to protect employees from slip, trip and fall hazards on any walking/working surface and employees have a responsibility to use stairways correctly, as intended.

Platform landings on stairways must be free of obstructions like the accumulation of debris, materials, or trash. The door or gate opening up onto a platform of stairway must open freely and not present a tripping hazard.

The majority of stairway workplace incidents occur when an employee is not paying attention, they are rushing and they are not watching their footing. Never carry a load with both hands while going up or down the stairs. This is dangerous for many reasons:

Just because walking up and down the stairs seems basic, and we've all been doing it since we were toddlers, don't assume you can skip the safety meeting on this topic. Slips, trips and falls happen everyday on workplace stairways and all employees can benefit from these great reminders on stairway safety.

A membership to Weeklysafety.com comes at a very low price that never goes up no matter how many employees you have and no matter how many awesome safety topics you use. Included in your membership are hundreds of safety topics that you can use for your safety meetings, toolbox talks and safety moments.

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Safe steps in food handling, cooking, and storage are essential in preventing foodborne illness. You can't see, smell, or taste harmful bacteria that may cause illness. In every step of food preparation, follow the four guidelines to keep food safe:

Cook all raw beef, pork, lamb and veal steaks, chops, and roasts to a minimum internal temperature of 145 F as measured with a food thermometer before removing meat from the heat source. For safety and quality, allow meat to rest for at least three minutes before carving or consuming. For reasons of personal preference, consumers may choose to cook meat at higher temperatures.

Worker Health and Safety Awareness Training in Four Steps is a training program developed by the Ministry of Labour, Immigration, Training and Skills Development. It is focused on the health and safety rights and responsibilities of workers, supervisors and employers and is a general introduction to workplace health and safety.

This program meets the requirements for basic occupational health and safety awareness training described in O. Reg. 297/13. Employers may choose to use another program but should make sure it meets the requirements in the regulation.

The workbook must be printed, completed and signed to serve as a record of training. The Ministry of Labour, Immigration, Training and Skills Development does not issue or require certificates for users of the workbook.

You should keep records that show all your workers have received the information in this program. Each worker should have their own workbook (or print-outs from the eLearning program) to keep as a reference for the future.

This training program raises general awareness about rights, responsibilities and where to get more information and help with workplace health and safety. Be sure to orient your workers to your specific workplace, the hazards they may encounter when they are doing their job, and the health and safety laws and workplace procedures put in place to protect them.

If you choose to use another program to deliver the basic occupational health and safety awareness training required under O. Reg. 297/13, consult our guide to the regulation for details on those requirements.

The Ministry of Labour, Immigration, Training and Skills Development advances safe, fair and harmonious workplace practices that are essential to the social and economic well-being of the people of Ontario.

Even if a lifeguard is present, parents and caregivers should still take the responsibility of being a designated Water Watcher. When any lifeguard chair is empty, the remaining lifeguards may not be able to see the entire pool and when lifeguards are seated in low chairs, their view can be blocked by patrons in the pool.

Proper fences, barriers, alarms and covers can be lifesaving devices. A fence of at least four feet in height should surround the pool or spa on all sides and should not be climbable for children. The water should only be accessible through a self-closing, self-latching gate. Teach children to never try to climb over the gate or fence. Install a door alarm from the house to the pool area, and keep pool and spa covers in working order.

The Virginia Graeme Baker Pool & Spa Safety Act (P&SS Act), the law which founded the Pool Safely campaign, takes its name from Virginia Graeme Baker, a seven-year-old girl who drowned after she was trapped under water by the powerful suction from a hot tub drain.

Despite being a member of her community swim and diving team, Graeme became stuck to a hot tub drain and was unable to pull herself free. Efforts by her mother to pull Graeme from the drain proved unsuccessful. The two men who eventually freed Graeme from the spa pulled so hard that the drain cover broke from the force. Graeme died from drowning, but the real cause of her death was suction entrapment due to a faulty drain cover.

After her tragic death, her mother, Nancy Baker, worked tirelessly to advocate for pool and spa safety. Mrs. Baker, her family and Safe Kids Worldwide actively lobbied Congress to win support for a law to require anti-entrapment drain covers and other safety devices, as needed. The statute, which was sponsored by U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, was signed into law by the President in December 2007.

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Running any business comes with its own set of risks. Of all the types of risks, though, safety risks are the ones that demand the most attention. After all, ensuring a safe workplace for all employees is the responsibility of every employer. Potential safety hazards must be mitigated with an effective risk management process. Of course, before implementing such a process, safety risks and hazards need to be found. This is where site safety inspections come in.

Conducting safety inspections in the workplace is important for several reasons. Regulatory compliance would be the first of these, as even though the Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA) doesn't mandate inspections, they strongly recommend it.

Of course, compliance is not the only reason to carry out regular inspections for hazards at your workplace. They can be an important part of your overall health and safety program, if your company has one. Some of the reasons for establishing a process for regular safety inspections include:

To conduct an effective safety inspection, it may be useful to consider it a part of a continuous improvement cycle to ensure the safest possible workplace for your employees. Here are the steps you can take to streamline your process.

Try to ensure that your inspection covers all the shifts in the day, and also the areas where the work is not as regular (such as equipment maintenance activities) so that all possible hazards are explored. This schedule should then be communicated to all the stakeholders involved in the inspection (such as shift supervisors, managers, etc.).

Once a comprehensive strategy has been created, it's time to carry out the inspection. The inspection team must observe all work processes and equipment closely, looking for possible workplace hazards including:

You may be required to fill an inspection form, especially if you're conducting the safety inspection for insurance purposes. Even if it's not required, such a form may be useful to keep a record of your inspection data.

An online workplace inspection solution such as Pulpstream would help make your inspection process smoother and more efficient by helping you record and keep track of all the information in a single, intuitive platform rather than dealing with several forms and documentation. It would also be excellent for accessibility, as all the relevant stakeholders could view inspection data without the hassle of emails or other methods.

Any trends in the collected data would help identify the root causes of issues and make changes at the enterprise level to prevent the hazards from occurring again. A cloud-based, automated inspection solution would make this work simple and efficient, analyzing trends and generating reports to make planning corrective actions easy.

In your inspection report, include a section proposing the actions to be taken to correct the hazards found. For example, if a certain work practice involves safety risk, the proposed action may be a recommendation to reform the practice. Or, if the data shows a concerning trend, a team may need to be instituted to investigate the matter further.

Make sure your proposed actions are comprehensive, including the delegation of work for all the proposed actions, deadlines for the actions to be completed, and a way to report the progress in this work by providing the teams responsible for corrective actions with the contact information of the stakeholders to report to.

Schedule regular follow-ups to ensure that your findings from the safety inspection are being acted upon. When the proposed deadlines for the actions pass, ask the relevant teams for progress reports and follow up with stakeholders to check if the solution is working.

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