Safety Action Plan

Safety Action Plan

Name

Institution

Safety Action Plan

The specific tasks that should be done to reduce the number of injury cases include:

The above actions should be taken immediately as possible so as to avoid any further injuries. A time allowance of a month can be given to the company to let it recruit the safety team. Funds also need to be set aside to pay the safety team and also maintain it. Regular periodic training after a while – say 6 months – will also be carried out to remind employees of the rules that they are supposed to follow.

• Establish a safety team that contains safety experts in the premises.
• Let the safety team train employees on proper use of machines to avoid MSDs.

Value of training employees to handle mechanics

It is the company’s responsibility to make sure that the premises have a safety team that helps to create and maintain a well laid out safety culture within the premises. The senior management should also involve itself in the day to day activities of the safety team so that other employees could take the safety team seriously (da Costa, B. R., & Vieira, E. R., 2010). The safety team’s major functions would be to train and equip the employees with necessary safety skills and make sure that they are implemented daily. The steps taken while training includes:

For employees that operate on machinery, factors such as load moments and the arm’s fulcrum should be explained in details. The load moments refer to the maximum load that can be applied to a static or moving machine without causing it to breakdown. The values of these loads are always indicated on the machine manual, including the safety factor. The safety factor reduces the value of the maximum load that can be applied for safety purposes. On the other hand, there is a calculated distance that one shouldn’t exceed when stretching the arms to operate on machines as this would cause back pains. Implementing these details would result in fewer injuries, fewer insurance funds and hence more contingency funds for the company’s well-being.

• Giving workers specific safety instructions to ensure that they don’t cause danger to themselves and to others.
• Give the employees adequate protective gear that fits their tasks.
  • Give employees instructions when working on jobs that have specific operating procedures.
  • Put employees that have just been trained under probation until they seem to have mastered the rules.

Importance of Hierarchy of Controls

A hierarchy of control shows employees which preventive and control measures to go for first. The measures are usually grouped into four in the order listed below:

The importance of the hierarchy above can be shown in a case example. When a company buys a machine that is noise, its technical measure is to insulate it to protect employees from the noise. If the insulation fails, then the organization should look for a way to provide employees with ear muffs of other ways of protecting them from the noise. These serve as the organization measures. If they fail, then each person has to take it up to himself to protect themselves against the noise e.g. by buying their own ear guards. The efficiency of the measures on top is more reliable than those on the lower side.

• Technical measures
• Organizational measures
  • Personal measures
  • Behavioral measures

Need for Engineering Solutions

The science of ergonomics, if studied well, can be used to come up with ways to fully suppress the impact that MSDs have on employees. Ergonomics work to reduce the stresses that are applied to specific muscles, especially the arms and back, and hence limit disorders and injuries. Engineering comes in when one is trying to design ergonomic structures such as work spaces, the displays, the room’s lighting, and even the equipment being used as per the physical capabilities of the operator.

How to Monitor the Workplace

Ergonomic hazards in the workplace can be monitored and prevented in various ways, the most obvious being the use of CCTV cameras to surveil the workplace. The control room for the cameras can be left for the safety team to operate. Members of the safety team can also go round the workshops and machine points on a timely basis to see whether members adhere to the rules. Safety notes can also be placed throughout the workplace to remind employees to observe ergonomics constantly (Hoe, V. C., Urquhart, D. M., Kelsall, H. L., & Sim, M. R., 2012).

References

da Costa, B. R., & Vieira, E. R. (2010). Risk factors for work‐related musculoskeletal disorders: a systematic review of recent longitudinal studies. American journal of industrial medicine, 53(3), 285-323.

Hoe, V. C., Urquhart, D. M., Kelsall, H. L., & Sim, M. R. (2012). Ergonomic design and training for preventing work-related musculoskeletal disorders of the upper limb and neck in adults. Cochrane Database Syst Rev, 8.