How to improve safety and reduce risks in 2022

You undoubtedly have a lot of goals for this year, but improving safety and reducing risks should always be one of your top priorities. Before we even get started on how to improve safety and reduce incident occurrence, you need to know that the number 1 thing you will need to do is introduce systems. Without doing so, you will end up spending a lot of time on risk management, you have an increased risk of non-compliance and you also risk losing all your precious data. Now that that’s out of the way, let's dive right into what you can do to improve safety and manage risks at your company!

Conduct regular audits

Safety/location audits are going to be the best things you can possibly do to ensure compliance with safety measures and stop incidents before they occur. Particularly for businesses with multiple locations, ensuring that all of your locations are compliant with internal and external regulations can be a mammoth task! With an auditing tool that allows you to schedule regular self-audits, you can be sure that all your sites are as risk-free as possible. 

Empower your staff to champion safety

You can’t systemise your people, which means incidents can still occur. No, we aren’t about to suggest you replace all your workers with robots, we think you should ensure your workers are all engaged with safety. By empowering your team to essentially be their own safety officers, they will be better equipped to avoid incidents and report on them if and when they occur. To help empower your team to be safety champions, there's a couple things you need to do:

• Define safety standards (see below for further detail)
• Establish a culture of honesty and trust
• Focus on positive feedback when mistakes are made
• Lead by example

There are lots of great initiatives you can put in place to help ensure your team are safety champions, but those few points are a great way to start!

Streamline incident reporting

Although you definitely can reduce the occurrence, there are always going to be some incidents that occur. That’s why you’ll still need efficient ways to report on incidents when they do occur. Get yourself a system that allows your team to easily report on any kind of incident that may occur and allow your management team to review and action those reports when they do come in. By systemising incident reporting, you can save countless hours and save yourself the headache from when forms get mishandled!

Create clear standards and policies surrounding safety

It’s impossible for your workers to know how to do their job safely if you don’t outline it for them! It’s not enough just to assume your team has some common sense - because that’s how you can get into a bit of legal trouble! Create safety policies and procedures based on your internal and external standards (such as FairWork policies or OH&S standards) and ensure compliance with them by including verification processes and viewing detailed reporting. You simply can’t improve safety without setting standards and letting your team know what is expected of them.

Monitor compliance with reporting

It doesn’t matter what safety measures you have put in place if you can’t report on their effectiveness! You need to know that all of your locations have safety on the brain and are doing everything that is expected of them. With the measures you have (hopefully) put in place such as policies and procedures and safety audits, you will have this really valuable data that will indicate which sites are up to snuff and which members of your team have completed their safety training. This reporting will allow you to make decisions on what actions need to occur and can help you solve problems before they have even occurred!

Just remember, safety and compliance is part of every role in your company. Everyone needs to do their part.

For more information on the system that can help you minimise and manage risks with ease, reach out to the experts at Ideagen Op Central by scheduling a live demo of Ideagen Op Central!