Management strategies for reducing workplace injury and illness risks

Workplace Injury

Reducing workplace injury requires a multifaceted approach, and requires responsibility on the part of employees and managers. I am frequently called upon to move, lift, or manipulate objects. Most of the time this behavior is in accordance with my job description, and I was offered some basic safety training and guidelines when I was hired to perform the job. However, the details of each procedure were not offered in the training. As a result, we only received general guidance, such as how to bend our knees when lifting heavy objects. Issues related to workplace environment and ergonomics remain woefully ignored by senior management. Moreover, there is no ongoing training to remind personnel of their role and responsibility in preventing workplace injury. I have witnessed many of my colleagues do things that are not according to recommended procedure, thereby causing injury.

Management is often able to prevent workplace injuries, in part by implementing an organizational change policy. According to the Center for Behavioral Safety (2010), the process of change related to increasing workplace safety can take years because it involves shifts in organizational culture as well as strategic engineering strategies designed to alter the look and feel of the workplace environment. When the workplace environment has been poorly designed, it is harder and costlier to implement changes that would benefit workplace safety. Still, management plays a major role in preventing and addressing problems.

The first step to improving workplace safety from a management perspective is risk assessment and organizational analysis. The change process needs to be tailor made to each department or even each room of the organization -- not just to the organization as a whole (Center for Behavioral Safety, 2010). Change cannot be too general, as to cause the problems I have seen in my own workplace environment. Specificity is required, which is why management should hire a team of safety analysts, or management should perform this duty. As McFarlin (n.d.) notes, identitying main hazards and risks in the environment is the very first step management can take to ensure long-term change in the organizational culture.

The second step is to work with employees directly, related to the specific challenges each employee or department contends with on a daily basis. If necessary, hazardous areas or products need to be signed better to avoid ambiguity (McFarlin, n.d). A though plan of action can only result when the hazard has been developed, and when employee input has been received. Employees need to participate in the process, because it is they who are dealing with the behaviors causing the potential injury. As the Center for Behavioral Safety (2010) puts it, managers need to customize processes to fit employees.