Make Your Workplace Safer and Save Money

Keeping accurate records is essential to making your business successful. Proper investigation and recordkeeping of accidents serves an important purpose: It uncovers information that you can use to make your workplace safer in the future.

Accidents seldom have a single cause. Use careful thought and sound judgment when investigating. Get all the details.

Here are some tips:

1. Question the injured employee and all witnesses as soon as possible. Ask witnesses to draw sketches if they can’t adequately describe the scene. Keep asking questions. Don’t settle for simple responses such as “employee negligence caused it” or “it was faulty equipment.”
2. Try not to ask “Why?” questions. It’s better to ask “What?” questions because they’re more objective and don’t imply fault. For example, “What were you doing at the time of the accident?” (rather than “Why did this happen?”) Or “What caused the equipment to fail?” (rather than “Why did your equipment fail?”)
3. Make sure you keep all records required under federal and state laws and regulations.
4. Involve staff members in investigating accidents. It makes them feel like they’re a part of the effort to make your workplace safe. Conduct confidential interviews and take suggestions seriously. Use employee awareness, acceptance and participation to your advantage. Your ultimate goal is to eliminate accidents. Not employees.
5. After you compile the details and witnesses statements, use them. Compare the findings with other accidents. Look for patterns such as:

• Environment - Are the accidents occurring in the same department?
• Type of Job - Do the accidents happen with a certain type of job?
• Time - Are the accidents occurring at a certain time?
• Type of Injury - Do the accidents involve the same type of injury?
• Equipment - Is it always an equipment failure or is the equipment mishandled?
• Employees - Is the same employee having the accidents or are different employees involved? If accidents are random, are the employees getting proper training?

Review accidents regularly. Determine the accident patterns you have in your workplace. Then take corrective steps to prevent similar accidents from happening in the future. Prevention efforts can save your company a bundle in fines, workers’ compensation insurance and other injury-related costs. For every $1 invested in safety and health programs, some contractors can save as much as $4 to $6 in costs related to workplace injuries and illnesses. It’s an investment that makes sense.