- Do your employees accurately identify hazards during safety training but not attend to them in the workplace?
- Do your employees focus on the task at hand to the exclusion of imminent hazards?
- Do your employees regularly ensure that their associates are aware of workplace hazards in real time?
- Do you have a process of continuous improvement focused on reducing the frequency of your employees’ exposure to workplace hazards?
Some organizations have strong safety practices but are challenged getting employees to recognize and react to hazards in the workplace. One of the most effective approaches to this problem is to create a hazard recognition process that involves employees in safety observations much like is typically done in a behavior-based safety process, but with a checklist(s) focusing on hazards and feedback conversations focused on improving the employees’ ability to recognize hazards in their workplace.
During the observation, conversations occur on both behaviors that help control the risks in the presence of the hazard and recognition of hazards in the workplace. Information from these observations can be used by leadership to develop action plans that reduce frequency with which employees are exposed to significant risks of injury and the removal of any obstacles to employee’s controlling risk. The end results? A continuously improving system that engages employees in increasing hazard recognition and mitigation.