Get the Most out of Your Safety Inspections

Regular workplace safety inspections are important for several reasons. First, they help to fulfill your Injury and Illness Prevention Program (IIPP) requirements. Second, they are a proactive way of dealing with safety-you catch the problem before an accident happens. And third, they make safety visible to your employees. Regardless of whether your safety manager, supervisors, or safety committee performs workplace safety inspections, your workers see the inspections going on-this lets them know you're serious about safety in the workplace.

The purpose of a workplace safety inspection is to make a systematic evaluation of safety conditions in the workplace, which can include not only physical conditions but also worker behaviors. Here are some tips to make the most of your workplace safety inspections.

Regular inspections on your part are just one way to help prepare for a visit from Cal/OSHA.

Use a checklist.To be an effective tool, the safety inspection needs to be more than a cursory look; a good safety inspection is a detailed and concentrated evaluation of what's going on. Using a checklist helps you to focus on what you are inspecting. This is especially important if you have any sort of combined inspections.

Look at frequency. When scheduling periodic inspections, give consideration to the differences that are present in your workplace; not all areas may warrant the same frequency of inspection. For example, production areas will need more frequent inspections and should be scheduled for weekly, or even daily, inspection, depending on the circumstances in the work area. However, storage areas that are not often used and see little employee traffic may only warrant monthly or quarterly inspections.

Inspect at different times. Some issues may be present only intermittently-such as when a machine is operating. To ensure you aren't missing these types of hazards, conduct inspections on different shifts or at different times.

Remember it's all not at eye level. Safety hazards don't occur just at eye level. When inspecting, don't forget to look up, down, around, and into.

If it can be taken care of now, do it.When doing your inspection, if you find problems that can be fixed immediately-for example, a machine guard is sitting on the floor next to the mechanism it's supposed to cover-do it right then rather than completing the inspection and then writing and distributing the report. This reduces exposure to workers and makes the inspection follow-up list more manageable.

Have a follow-up list.Inspecting and finding hazards does no good if the hazards identified are not addressed. Ensure that corrective action is taken and that subsequent inspections verify the corrective action.

Assign priorities.You can facilitate follow-up corrective action by assigning priorities to the safety hazards as you find them. When assigning priorities, consider the severity of the hazard you've found as well as how many employees are exposed. This will help to ensure that significant hazards are taken care of more quickly than may occur with a follow-up list that does not have priorities assigned since the tendency is to do that which is easiest-not necessarily the most hazardous-first.