PREVYMAN and tools to identify hazards and assess risks

Where have I been and what happened to me?   

These days I have accompanied a professional colleague in the legal audit process in occupational risk prevention. It was the first time she was faced with this process, she had just been hired as Head of the Prevention Service (SPP), and she asked me for help since the audit team has detected that it is susceptible to improving risk detection in the prevention.           

The occurrence of accidents has been observed due to causes that should have been overcome as well as undetected risks and dangers that indicate a certain obsolescence in the system and excesses of confidence. The accident rate is somewhat higher than the average for the sector of activity, which highlights the need to act to reduce it and, even, staff turnover problems higher than what is desirable and expected are detected.

The preventive documentation is formally correct but it is true that it is only reviewed when the prevention service itself takes the initiative in this regard, then it seems evident that dynamism must be added to the system and some additional tools established to detect risks and situations not contemplated in the preventive system.

What means does the company have to avoid this situation?

Once again, I have remembered Vision Zero and its 7 Golden Rules: Identify Hazards, Define Goals, Ensure a Safe and Healthy System, Use safe and healthy technologies, Improve Skills as well as Invest in People.

I believe that if we design and implement new detection and control tools in the system and properly promote practices in this regard, we can achieve results in not too long. After presenting the idea to the company management and discussing it within the Health and Safety Committee, we have designed a plan with the following measures:

1. A direct communication tool has been created, both in paper and electronic format, between workers and the SPP. It has been called Risk Detection Part (PDR), through which any worker can report any safety incident that they detect in their workplace.In addition, an incentive has been established to encourage workers to report such incidents that may compromise their safety.
2. A award has been designed for the best initiative in occupational risk prevention proposed by a worker and whose objective is to improve health and safety conditions.
3. Concepts of occupational risk prevention are included in the meetings at the beginning of the day, where various issues are discussed such as the circumstances of the accidents that have occurred or brief training pills on a certain task.
4. _Workers are invited to make a short monthly video about any new risk detected with the PDR that is disseminated among the members of the Company. This action will be directed by the own prevention service and the health and safety committee based on the content of the PDR.
5. ___Creation of a working group of middle managers on risk prevention labor that addresses risk analysis, accidents and serves as a channel for direct communication with base workers. It will hold meetings, in principle led by the SPP, on a monthly basis, lasting no more than one hour and with the participation of components who, over time, will rotate with other managers. It will begin with training for them.
6. The SPP has designed a consistent “safety walk” system___ in which middle managers periodically carry out a tour of the company's facilities, supervising that there are no risks that could cause accidents as well as to detect possible weak points or bad practices on the part of a worker that could compromise their safety or that of other colleagues. For each incident detected in these safety walks, a preventive measure will be established, setting an implementation period and a person responsible.

What results have been obtained?    

6 months have passed since the worker participation measures were implemented and I have decided to visit my colleague so that he can tell me what results he is obtaining and he tells me that...

1. The PDRs have been a success and the workers detected some risks that were not contemplated in the Risk Assessment.
2. With the Awards for the Best Initiative, the work of the Middle Management Group and the dissemination of the monthly Videos that the workers are making, an adequate and constant climate has been created in relation to prevention that favors the accident rate that has decreased.  
3. The SPP's effort to explain accidents in each work section and the concepts introduced by middle managers, have reduced the distractions and overconfidence of workers that could cause accidents.
4. The new safety walk system has meant a approach to workers, the detection of new risks and the provision of consequent preventive measures as well as greater awareness in the General Management.   
5. All of this results in that, if we compare the accident rate of the 6 months prior to the implementation of the participation measures with the current one (frequency rate), it has been reduced by 21.4%.
6. HTMLTAG260___Likewise, ___ HTMLTAG263______los Collateral damages from work accidents such as the economic cost, administrative sanctions and judicial processes se have been significantly reduced.

“Any resemblance to reality is NOT pure match”        

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