What Is a Safety and Health Management Program?

This is an older article and is based on materials OSHA created BEFORE they finalized their recent Safety and Health Management guidelines. This article still has a lot of useful information, and we encourage you to read it, but before you begin, know that you may also be interested in some of the following articles:

• Safety and Health Management in 5 Steps (based on ANSI Z10 and OSHA's new guidance)
• Safety and Health Management Best Practices (an overview of OSHA's new guidance)
• The first article in our multi-article series on safety and health management (introduces several different standards and guidelines than look in detail at ANSI Z10)
• An extended introduction to the new ISO 45001 Safety and Health Management Systems standard
• First 10 Steps of Getting Started in Safety Management infographic

And with that said, we'll let you get back to this older article...

OSHA recommends that every workplace set up a Safety and Health Management program. The fact that OSHA says it's a good idea is a pretty persuasive reason to do it, we think.

But in addition, creating a safety and health management program also decreases incident rates, including injuries and illnesses. And that's good.

And health and safety management programs also have a financial benefit, saving companies money. So win/win/win, right?

In this article, we'll explain more fully some of the reasons for having a safety and health management program that we just introduced above. Then we'll explain the features of a safety and health management system. And we'll include information and helpful links to other resources that can help you create, implement, and maintain your safety and health management program.

By the time you're done reading this, you'll have enough information to get moving in a positive direction, or maybe add some additional tweaks to your existing health and safety management program.

Note: Much of the information in this article is drawn from OSHA's Safety and Health Management Systems e-tool, which is a great resource and which itself includes a lot of links to other great safety and health resources. Check it out!

What Is a Safety and Health Management Program?

According to OSHA:

"A safety and health management system is a proactive, collaborative process to find and fix workplace hazards before employees are injured or become ill. The benefits of implementing safety and health management systems include protecting workers, saving money, and making all your hazard-specific programs more effective. "

Sounds good, right?

Is There a Need for Safety and Health Management Programs?

Yes.

According to OSHA, almost 50 people are injured on the job EVERY MINUTE of the 40-hour work week. Think about that--that's a lot!

Actually, that's so much we figured we'd do some math on that. It turns out we're talking about 36,000 injuries on the job every week, or 1,872,000 injuries on the job each year. If all those injured people had to move together to form a new city, they'd create the fifth biggest city in the United States--just behind Houston and ahead of Philadelphia.

The same OSHA document explains that 17 workers day on the job every day. Again, take a look at that number. Each day, 17 people never come home from work. Imagine what this does to their families, friends, and loved ones.

Again, we did some additional math with that one. That works out to 85 deaths on the job per week, or 4,420 deaths on the job each year. The town I grew up in had about 10,000 people, so that's about half of my home town. Or to put that a different way, just under 3,000 people died on 9-11, which means every year more people die at work in America than the number of people who died on 9-11. That's sobering when you think of it that way.

So yeah, there's a need for safety and health management programs at work. That seems obvious enough.

What Are The Benefits of Having a Safety and Health Management Program at Work?

By creating a safety and health management program at work, you'll reap many benefits. Let's look at some now.

Fewer Injuries and Illnesses

This one is a no-brainer. Let's look at a few statistics from OSHA to back to this:

"Since OSHA was created 28 years ago, workplace fatalities have been cut in half. Occupational injury and illness rates have been declining for the past five years. In 1997, they dropped to the lowest level since the U.S. began collecting this information."

Cutting workplace injuries fatalities in half is pretty impressive. And so are year-after-year declines of injuries and illnesses and lowest-ever-levels since data has been collected.

And how about this one?

"Our premier partnership, the Voluntary Protection Program continues to pay big dividends. Today [at] more than 500 workplaces, representing 180 industries....injury rates are 50 percent below the average for their industries."

Again, 50% is significant and worth noting.

Financial Return on Investment (ROI)

According to OSHA, studies have shown that every dollar ($1) invested in health and safety has an ROI of $4-6. You'd jump at that if a bank were offering that kind of return for your own money. Why not make the same no-brainer investment in health and safety?

And how about this fact from OSHA:

"Our premier partnership, the Voluntary Protection Program, continues to pay big dividends. Today more than 500 workplaces, representing 180 industries, save $110 million each year [due to their participation]."

$110 million is nothing to sneeze at. You might note that's spread amongst 500 workplaces and think maybe that's not so much, but doing a little math you see that comes out to $220,000 per workplace, which against isn't sneeze-worthy.

Even eliminating one common cause of injuries would make a major difference. Again, let's look at some facts from OSHA:

"Nearly one-third of all serious occupational injuries and illnesses stem from overexertion or repetitive motion. These are disabling, expensive injuries. They cost our economy as much as $20 billion in direct costs and billions more in indirect costs."

Twenty billion is a lot of money. For example, there are just short of 320 million people in the United States. That means if we could eliminate occupational injuries resulting from overexertion or repetitive motion, we'd save about $62.50 for every person in the United States.

Need some more convincing? OSHA's Safety Pays website provides some great information. Here's how OSHA describes it:

"OSHA's "$afety Pays" program can help employers assess the impact of occupational injuries and illnesses on their profitability. This program uses a company's profit margin, the average costs of an injury or illness, and an indirect cost multiplier to project the amount of sales a company would need to cover those costs. The program is intended as a tool to raise awareness of how occupational injuries and illnesses can impact a company's profitability..."

Components of an Effective Safety and Health Management Program

According to OSHA, an effective safety and health management program has four components:

• Management leadership and employee involvement
• Analysis of worksite to identify hazards
• Hazard prevention and control to protect workers from hazards
• Safety and health training

All four of these pieces have to be in place for the system to work. If just one piece of the system is broken or absent, the entire system will suffer as a result.

Click here to see an example of a robust safety and health program.

Let's go on to look at each of the four sections in more detail.

Safety & Health Management Program Component 1: Management Leadership and Employee Involvement

Both management and the rank-and-file employees must be committed to creating and sustaining a safety and health culture if it's going to work. Neither side can do it on their own, and the system will collapse if one side doesn't join in.

According to OSHA, here are some ways for management to demonstrate its commitment and for workers to be involved:

• Management should write a company safety and health policy
• The safety and health policy should be posted in public for all employees to see
• Employees should be involved in creating policy on safety and health issues
• Both sides should play an active role in safety activities
• The company should hold meetings that focus on employee health and safety
• All members of management and rank-and-file workers should follow all safety and health rules
• Time, effort, and money should be invested in the safety and health program--it doesn't happen on its own

Let's look at some additional aspects of manager and employee involvement next.

Management Leadership of the Safety and Health Program

Without leadership from management, the safety and health program is doomed to fail. Management provides a motivating force and, equally importantly, resources for the program.

Management must truly consider the health and safety of workers to be a core value of the company, and this concern for safety and health must be demonstrated in all actions of the company.

Management should ask itself if their safety and health system includes:

• The reasons why the safety and health program was created
• The goal for the safety and health program
• The way to reach the goal

Here's an OSHA example of a safety and health policy statement.

Here's an OSHA example of a strategic plan for health and safety.

Other ways to effectively lead the safety and health program include:

• Visible involvement of management in safety and health issues
• Assigning responsibility for safety and health issues to specific personnel
• Communicating those assignments clearly
• Providing adequate authority and resources to people in charge of safety and health
• Holding people in charge of safety and health accountable for safety and heatlh
• Creating a method for workers to report hazards
• Explaining to workers how to report hazards and encouraging them to do so
• Encouraging workers to report near-misses, injuries, illnesses, and other incidents
• Never acting to discourage reporting of hazards, near-misses, injuries, illnesses, or other incidents

Making Sure Management's Role in Safety and Health Is Apparent to Workers

If workers don't see management's involvement in safety and health, and the importance management places on safety and health, things will go south quickly.

Here are some ways for management to make sure workers see and believe they're involved and care:

• Be seen on the floor in informal safety activities and formal safety inspections, etc.
• Make yourself accessible to workers on health and safety issues
• Lead by example, always knowing and following health and safety rules
• Be involved in and actively participate in the safety and health committee, meetings, etc.

Now let's turn our attention to the other half of the equation--employee involvement.

Here's an OSHA guide for demonstrating management leadership of safety and health program.

Employee Involvement in Safety and Health Program

You can't have a safe workplace unless the employees can develop and express their buy-in to safety and health. This includes their own health and also the health of all other workers (plus contractors, temps, visitors, vendors, etc).

Why Should Employees Be Involved in Safety and Health Management?

Some companies may resist including employees in safety and health management, but that's the wrong way to go about it. Here's why:

• The rank-and-file workers are the ones who interact most closely with health and safety hazards. As a result, they have the most to win from an effective health and safety training program.
• Including more people leads to better results. More eyes, more brains, more solutions, etc.
• People are more likely to participate in a program they helped to create. On the flip-side, they're less likely to participate if they feel it's a "top-down" approach.
• Including workers makes them feel heard and appreciated. This in turn makes them more satisfied and productive workers.

How Can Employees Be Involved In Health and Safety Management?

Here are some ways that employees can participate in health and safety management:

• Participating in worksite safety inspections
• Performing job hazard analyses (JHAs or JSAs)
• Helping to prepare safe work practices
• Helping to eliminate workplace hazards or control workplace hazards
• Helping to develop and update safety and health rules
• Helping to train new and current employees on health and safety issues
• Being encouraged to report hazards
• Being allowed to fix hazards that are within their means to fix
• Being encouraged to provide feedback to coworkers who are working unsafely or are unaware of hazards (gently, of course)
• Being included in change-analysis teams when new equipment or processes are introduced

Here's an OSHA document explaining how employees can identify safety and health problems at the workplace.

Here's a previous blog post about how online training can help building a safety culture in the workplace by Convergence Training.

Safety and Health Management Programs: Responsibility, Authority, and Accountability

It's important to assign responsibility and authority for different aspects of the health and safety management program to various people.

In addition, though, it's important to make people accountable for the safety and health management program. According to OSHA, being accountable means "your performance is measured in relation to standards or goals that result in certain positive or negative consequences."

When people--both managers and employees--are accountable for aspects of the safety and health program, they are more likely to work hard to find solutions to safety and health problems. And, they're less likely to create obstructions.

Here are some tips for creating accountability in your safety and health management program:

• Create company policies, procedures, and rules that make performance standards related to safety and health clear
• Provide all resources needed to meet those standards--a safe and healthy workplace, effective health and safety training, appropriate oversite of work operations.
• Create and communicate to workers a system by which performance can be measured and judged acceptable or not acceptable
• Create positive and negative consequences for accountability and make these known in advance
• Apply these rules and standards at all levels of the organization

Here's an OSHA checklist regarding responsibility, authoring, and accountability for health and safety management.

Safety and Health Program Yearly Audits and Reviews

Your company's health and safety management program should be reviewed every year. The purpose, of course, is to make sure it is adequately protecting against workplace hazards. The audit program does this by seeing if polices and procedures were implemented and, if so, if they may their objectives. This information can then be used to modify the program if necessary in the next year.

OSHA provides a lot of helpful information on the yearly safety and health management audits here.

Safety & Health Management Program Component 2: Analysis of Worksite to Identify Hazards

The second necessary component of a safety and health management program is an ongoing process of analyzing the workplace to identify hazards.

The purpose of this is to identify hazards at the workplace so they can later be eliminated or controlled.

The worksite hazard analysis begins with a comprehensive, baseline hazard survey. Then, periodic updates should be performed.

Conducting the Worksite Analysis

OSHA provides these suggestions for conducting a worksite analysis:

• Become aware of the hazards that exist in your industry
• Create safety teams at work
• Create a system for employees to report hazards
• Encourage employees to report hazards using that system
• Have properly trained personnel conduct inspections of the worksite and correct hazards
• Ensure that any process changes or new systems are reviewed for hazards
• Get assistance from safety and health experts (insurance companies, consultants, etc.)
• Request a free OSHA consultant visit to get help from the experts

In addition, OSHA recommends these four actions as cornerstones of your worksite analysis:

• Comprehensive surveys
• Change analysis/analyses
• Hazard analysis/analyses
• Safety and health inspections

We'll look at each in more detail below.

Comprehensive Surveys

This should include (at least):

• A survey of noise levels
• Review of the respirator program
• Review of ergonomic risk factors
• Inventory of chemicals and hazardous materials
• Review of HazCom program
• Analysis of air samples for industrial hygiene purposes

Small businesses can get OSHA-funded, state-run consultants to visit their site and perform a comprehensive health and safety survey at no cost. Worker's comp carries and insurance companies are other options for this. And of course, there are private consultants in this business as well.

Larger companies most likely have internal staff to handle this.

Here's a safety and health inspection worksheet from OSHA.

Change Analyses

Before something new happens at the workplace, analyze it to identify any potential hazards. This is true of:

• New equipment
• New/different materials
• New processes
• New buildings
• New staffing

Here's a helpful process overview template from OSHA.

Hazard Analyses

At the simple end of the spectrum, this can involved performing a job hazard analysis (JHA).

Want some free help? Download this free How to Perform a JHA Guide.

Here's a short sample of the Job Hazard Analysis e-learning course by Convergence Training.

For more complicated jobs with more complex risks, consider using the following techniques:

• What-if checklist
• Hazard and operability study
• Failure mode and effect analysis
• Fault tree analysis

Here's further information from OSHA about these hazard analysis techniques.

Safety and Health Inspections

Your company should periodically perform routine health and safety inspections. The point is to identify hazards missed at other stages. These are generally done on a weekly basis. In addition, daily inspections of the work area should also be performed.

Routine site safety and health inspections are designed to catch hazards missed at other stages. This type of inspection should be done at regular intervals, generally on a weekly basis. In addition, procedures should be established that provide a daily inspection of the work area.

It's a good idea to create a checklist designed for this (or get one that's already been created). Base the checklist on:

• Past problems/hazards
• Standards that apply to your industry
• Input regarding safety and health from all employees
• Your company's safety policies, procedures, rules, and practices

Keep the following in mind about these inspections:

• They should cover ever part of the worksite
• They must be done at regular intervals (weekly and daily, for example)
• They must be done by people trained to recognize and control hazards
• Hazards that are identified must be tracked through to correction/control of the hazard
• Information from these inspections should be used to improve the hazard prevention and control program

Here's a safety and health inspection worksheet from OSHA.

Dealing with Hazards That Escape Safety and Health Program Controls

OSHA suggests the following tools for making sure identified and controlled hazards stay controlled and new hazards don't arise or are controlled when they do:

• Employee hazard reporting
• Accident and incident investigations
• Analysis of injury and illness trends

Let's look at each in more detail.

Employee Hazard Reporting

Your company should not only set up a system for employees to report hazards. You should also make it clear how to use that system to all employees, and encourage employees to use it.

It's a good idea to provide several different ways to report hazards. This will allow employees who may be uncomfortable reporting a hazard one way to do it another. Remember, the ultimate goal is just to get the hazards reported so you can correct them.

Some possible hazard reporting methods to consider include:

• Supervisor chain of command
• Safety and health committee member
• Voice mail
• Suggestion box
• Email

Effective hazard reporting systems must include:

• A policy that actively encourages employees to report hazards
• Appropriate and timely responses to the employee making the report (unless the report is anonymous, in which case responses could be made publicly)
• Time and appropriate correct action when necessary
• A system to track hazard reports and hazard corrections
• Use of that hazard reporting/correcting system
• Absolute protection of employees reporting hazards from any negative consequences

OSHA has some nice examples of employee hazard reporting forms. Here is one and is a second. And here's an example worker safety suggestion form from OSHA.

Accident and Incident Investigations

In the events that an incident does occur, an accident/incident investigation is necessary. This includes near-misses as well as injuries, illnesses, and property damage.

You can use the information from that investigation to correct hazards so another incident won't happen again.

During the investigation, ask these six key questions:

• Who?
• What?
• When?
• Where?
• Why?
• How?

Remember that incident investigations should remain positive, focus on finding the root cause, and are not intended to assign blame.

Here's our blog about performing an incident investigation.

Analysis of Injury and Illness Trends

Finally, it's important to analyze injury and illness trends over time to identify patterns.

Identifying common/repeat causes of injuries, illnesses, and near-misses allow you to identify hazards, control them, and prevent future incidents.

One place to start is by looking at your OSHA injury and illness forms. You can also check hazard inspection records and employee hazard reports.

The final action recommended under Worksite Analysis is analysis of injury and illness trends over time, so that patterns with common causes can be identified and prevented. Review of the OSHA injury and illness forms is the most common form of pattern analysis, but other records of hazards can be analyzed for patterns. Examples are inspection records and employee hazard reporting records.

Safety & Health Management Program Component 3: Hazard Prevention and Control to Protect Workers

Once your safety and health management program is in place, it's important to continually analyze the work area to keep hazards in check and keep workers safe.

Here are some ways to do this:

• Inspect and maintain equipment thoroughly and on a regular basis
• Make sure all hazard identification and correction procedures are in place
• Make sure everyone knows how to use PPE, how to main it, and is in fact using it appropriately
• Make sure everyone knows and follows established safe work procedures
• Make sure that, when needed, your worksite has a medical program appropriate for your facility
• Continually review the work environment and work practices to control or prevent workplace hazards

Hazard Prevention and Control: The Hierarchy of Controls and More

Identified hazards should be controlled using the hierarchy of controls and with other methods.

The hierarchy of controls includes the following:

• Engineering controls
• Safe work practices
• Administrative controls
• PPE

Let's look at each. Remember that in many cases you'll wind up using more than one control (such as an engineering control and PPE).

Read more about the Hierarchy of Controls,

Engineering Controls

Always try an engineering control first. The basic idea of an engineering control is to design the work environment and the job to eliminate hazards or reduce exposure to hazards.

Here are some tips from OSHA regarding engineering controls:

• If possible, design the facility, equipment, or process to eliminate the hazard
• Next, if possible, try to substitute something that is less hazardous
• If removal or substitution is not possible, try enclosing the hazard
• If enclosure is not possible, try guards, barriers, and/or ventilation

Safe Work Practices

After trying engineering controls, turn to safe work practices.

Safe work practices are general workplace rules and other rules specific to given operations, processes, or tasks.