Your Vision For Injury Prevention

Gary Smith for AAM BlogA SAFETY MANAGEMENT SERIES – PART I

WRITTEN BY GARY SMITH, APARTMENT BUILDING MANAGEMENT WORKERS COMPENSATION SELF INSURED FUND

In his book, Traction – Get a Grip on Your Business, Gino Wickman, author and successful entrepreneur, urges business owners to communicate a laser-focused vision in order to get everyone working in the same direction. In other words, he believes that by sharing your vision it will focus your team’s efforts in a way that gets amazing results. In order to illustrate the power of this focus, consider the example given by Al Ries in Focus: “The sun provides the earth with billions of kilowatts of energy, yet if you stand in it for an hour, the worst you will get is a little sunburn. On the other hand, a few watts of energy focused in one direction is all a laser beam needs to cut through diamonds.” As the calendar year draws to a close and you begin your strategic business planning for the upcoming year, it is important to consider your organization’s injury prevention efforts. If your vision for injury prevention is focused and shared by everyone in the organization, then you can get everyone pulling in the same direction.

Here are three important aspects to consider when developing a vision for injury prevention:

Safety graphicFOCUS ON TOP FIVES.
Analyze your loss runs from the previous three policy periods to identify the top five most severe (i.e., highest dollar amount) and the top five most frequent (i.e., highest number) injury types. An old insurance industry axiom is that “frequency breeds severity” and this often tends to be true. For example, if your most frequent injury type is “foreign body in the eye,” then you have a greater likelihood for a severe eye injury such as loss of vision. So, by identifying your organization’s most severe and most frequent injury types, injury prevention efforts take on a practical focus. Your organization’s energy and resources will be focused in on the areas where they are most needed.

PROACTIVE VERSUS REACTIVE.
Be prepared to require a proactive versus reactive approach to eliminating hazards likely to result in workplace injuries. Remember that for every dollar prudently invested in preventing injuries, you can expect to save $10, $100 or even $1,000 on injury claims and lost productivity. Creating a proactive injury prevention culture will be an effective tool in maintaining lasting injury prevention success.

EFFECTIVE HAZARD CONTROL.
Be prepared to require the most effective type of hazard control on the hierarchy of hazard controls. The hierarchy follows this order with #1 being the most effective and #5 being the least effective: 1.) elimination, 2.) substitution, 3.) engineering controls, 4.) administration and lastly 5.) personal protective equipment. The most effective hazard control that can be used is often times not considered.

By creating and sharing your vision, you will bring about a laser-focus in your organization. This concentrated focus is necessary to go to the next step and achieve excellent results. 

In our next article of this series, we will introduce an effective way to identify the best solutions and take effective actions towards preventing injuries.

Until then, should you need assistance with developing a vision for injury prevention in your workplace, please contact Gary Smith, CRM, at (517) 338-3367 or Gary.Smith@cmi-yorkrsg.com

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