Accident Prevention in the Workplace

“To err is human” wrote the great Alexander Pope in his work, ‘An Essay on Criticism’. While we all know and understand that being human means we are prone to mistakes, there is one place where mistakes should be avoided at all costs: the workplace.

Accident prevention is a matter of enormous importance in the business world. Unfortunately, there are all too many accidents and injuries in the workplace in the United States. And of all workplace accidents, an incredible 90% are attributed to human error. What to do about these statistics? Reducing human error is an overriding, ongoing concern in accident prevention. How to make the workplace safer for everyone? These are key questions.

Also to consider is the question of economics and profit margins. A safer workplace will also be a more productive and profitable workplace, too. It has been reported that human error causes the manufacturing industry unplanned downtime of about 23%. This 23% translates, literally, into dollars of profit going right out the window. Once the time is lost, the money is lost, too and there is no getting it back.

One factor in accident prevention would be human error prevention training. One of the best human error prevention tools geared toward accident prevention is communication. After having bosses share communications with employees–important items such as data and relevant information–half of all employees report that they are more motivated and their productivity improved.

Another alternative for accident prevention would be regulatory compliance courses for employees. Information shared on-site in the workplace would be of great benefit. Discussions of matters such as memory failures and attention failures serve to raise awareness of possible workplace problems. This can go a long way in accident prevention.

To sum up, accident prevention is a major factor in today’s workplace. So much, in fact, that almost 45% of all manufacturers acknowledge that their business could be better at making their employees safe and focus more on improving their accident prevention policies. This is a step in the right direction, since awareness is a key factor for starting change and improvement in any endeavor.