Putting Together an Injury and Illness Prevention Program

You’ve read the statistics and you’ve seen the benefits. Now it’s time to assemble an OSHA-compliant Injury and Illness Prevention Plan (or IIPP) and put it in place in your business to help keep your employees safe and healthy. So, how do you go about writing and adopting one company-wide? Safety Direct America is here to help you ensure your business is run in a safe and efficient manner.

The Department of Industrial Relations for the state of California has an excellent checklist of questions you can follow. Here are some questions to ask yourself as you write an IIPP for your company:

  1. Who is the main person in charge of ensuring your company enacts and follows your IIPP?

Some companies have chief safety officers whose task it is to ensure all regulations are followed and to hold regular safety meetings with executives and workers about safety performance. While not required by law, it can be a good idea if your business is large enough.

  1. How do you reward safe employees/how do discipline employees who don’t follow your IIPP?

Setting clear reward and discipline guidelines will ensure fairness and help everyone from the most experienced worker to the least know exactly what will be expected of them in the workplace. Employees will be more incentivized to perform safely if there are rewards attached to safety performance.

  1. When and how often will you hold safety meetings to keep everyone on the same page?

Safety meetings can be as log or as short as you wish, although short meetings for individual departments that cover one or two topics usually works best. Company-wide safety meetings are also a good idea for covering broad subjects.

  1. How can employees report safety problems anonymously without fear of reprisal?

This question is vital to your IIPP as safety is never “finished”. There will always be changing conditions, and some things will need to be adjusted to keep employees safe.

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