Safety Advice from Richard Agar

Meet Innoworks’ Risk & Safety Officer Richard Agar!

Richard Agar is an OSHA certified safety professional. His hard work helps Innoworks’ partner clients maintain regulatory compliance and promote employee well being by creating safer work environments. The following tips were pulled from Richard’s playbook for safety and risk management. He hopes that by making client partners aware of potential pitfalls, they’ll be better positioned for future success.

Tip: Know Your Plans!

Injury and Illness Prevention Plan (IIPP) –  Failure to implement an effective injury and illness prevention program is the most common OSHA violation.

OSHA requires the following elements to be included in your plan for it to be considered an effective IIPP:

• Management duties
• Employee participation
• Hazard identification and assessment
• Hazard prevention and control
• Education and training
• Program evaluation and improvement

Emergency Action Plan –  An emergency action plan is essential to maintaining a safe work environment. Your emergency action plan must be in writing, kept in the workplace, and available to employees for review.

An employer with 10 or fewer employees may communicate the plan orally to employees.

Learning the emergency action plan during an emergency is too late! Be proactive, and educate employees on how to react before the emergency occurs.

Hazard Communication – Employers that have hazardous chemicals in their workplace are required by OSHA’s hazard communication standard to implement a hazard communication program. The program must include labels on containers of hazardous chemicals, safety data sheets (SDSs) for hazardous chemicals, and proper training for workers.

Contact

We encourage our clients to review their state’s requirements for all safety programs and contact Innoworks’ risk management team at riskmanagement@innovemp.com.