Before the COVID-19 crisis, the underreporting of accidents, injuries, illnesses, and other safety incidents loomed large as a major hurdle to improving safety performance. Since then, the pandemic has scrambled many safety priorities. But return to work shouldn’t be a return to safety underreporting. And here’s why.
Why Return to Work Shouldn’t Be a Return to Safety Underreporting
Topics: Work Health Safety, Safety Management, Safety Newsletter
Why the COVID-19 Crisis Has Made Lone-Workers More Difficult to Protect
The imperatives of social distancing during the pandemic have created unprecedented changes to work. Foremost among them: the increased need for people to work alone or in remote arrangements.
For PCBUs (Persons Conducting a Business or Undertaking), more people working alone mean more lone workers in need of a new class of safety protections, documented internal policies to keep this high-risk occupational group out of harm’s way. How to go about mitigating the risk so you don’t incur the liability?
Topics: Work Health Safety, Safety Management, Safety Newsletter
Returning to Work in a New Era for Workplace Health and Safety
PCBUs (Persons Conducting a Business or Undertaking) in the Australian state of New South Wales woke up this month to a more aggressive safety compliance regime.
Amendments to pre-existing safety law now put employers who fail to meet health and safety obligations on the hook for stiff new penalties should their negligence lead to a worker dying on the job. Those penalties include up to 25 years in prison for individual actors. Add to that, millions in fines for companies.
Topics: Work Health Safety, Safety Management, Safety Newsletter
Avoid One-Size-Fits-All Strategies When Planning for a Safe Return to Work
For many organizations whose physical operations were forced to close due to COVID-19-induced lockdowns, reopening day is coming soon. Indeed, employers are busy planning for a safe reopening as the day approaches.
While planning matters, it’s the quality of those plans that will determine whether a safe reopening is possible. And as it turns out, too many organizations follow one-size-fits-all strategies that can actually compromise the safety of returning employees, imperiling business recovery from the crisis. How, exactly?
Topics: Work Health Safety, Safety Newsletter
Overcoming the Safety Risk of Back to Work in the Age of COVID-19
After months of disruption, organizations are eager to return to normal as part of the recovery lifecycle. For many, that means resuming operations in work facilities vacated due to local, state, and national lockdown orders.
Topics: Work Health Safety, Safety Management, Safety Newsletter, Epidemic Response Module
Noggin Celebrates World Day for Safety and Health at Work and Workers' Memorial Day
With the spread of the coronavirus, the health and safety of our workers is back in the news. Indeed, frontline workers, especially healthcare professionals, have become the faces of the response to the COVID-19 pandemic – their heroism matched only by the level of safety risk they court to do their jobs, with data sources showing a disproportionate number of healthcare workers among those infected with the coronavirus.
Topics: Work Health Safety, Safety Management, Epidemic Response Module
Before COVID-19: Was the serial underreporting of safety incidents the canary in the coalmine for frontline-worker safety risk?
Frontline workers, especially healthcare professionals, have become the faces of the response to the COVID-19 pandemic. In areas hard hit by the rapid spread of the coronavirus, like Lombardy, New York City, and New Orleans, stories of the noble sacrifices of healthcare workers who have had to risk their personal safety to treat patients without an adequate stock of personal protective equipment (PPE) have proliferated – incomplete data sources point to at least 5,400 healthcare workers COVID-19 infections in the U.S. alone, with dozens of deaths.
Topics: Work Health Safety, Safety Management, Epidemic Response Module
Safety Regulators Are Releasing New Safety Guidelines: Will your safety software keep up?
The COVID-19 public health crisis is rapidly changing the way we do work. And safety regulators aren’t staying on the sidelines.
As major shifts occur in the workplace, safety regulators are issuing new recommendations and descriptions of mandatory safety and health standards. For PCBUs, the question remains, though: will your safety software adjust to the changes?
Topics: Work Health Safety, Safety Management, Safety Newsletter
Planning to Maintain Duty of Care during a Public Health Crisis
With a surge of coronavirus cases around the world, new reports of workplace closures due to fear of exposure are emerging outside of coronavirus-epicenter, China, and outbreak hotspots like Hong Kong, South Korea, and Italy.
Topics: Crisis Management, Work Health Safety, Crisis Planning, Safety Management, Safety Newsletter
Key Factors to Consider for Lone-Worker Safety Risk Mitigation
Hiring employees to perform remote and isolated work often helps businesses improve their productivity. But lone work isn’t without operational risk. For one, managing the safety risk to lone worker populations is part and parcel of a PCBU’s (Person Conducting a Business or Undertaking) duty of care obligation.
Topics: Work Health Safety, Safety Management, Safety Newsletter