National Safety Month is observed annually in June. However, workplace safety should be a top priority all year long. Here are some different ways you can better prepare for the unexpected, reinvigorate your training, and make your workplace a safer place to be.
Establish a Safety Committee
Have one representative from each department on the committee. Bringing in members from all different teams helps ensure you don’t have any safety blind spots. The committee should meet monthly or quarterly, and its responsibilities can include things like planning and scheduling disaster drills and composing a quarterly safety newsletter.
Go on a Scavenger Hunt
Have employees go on the hunt for potential safety hazards like overloaded electrical outlets, outdated fire extinguishers, and trip hazards or have them see how many safety labels they can find. This not only helps you find things that need to be corrected and take action asap, but it also raises awareness of all the different ways people can get hurt at work.
Invite a Guest Speaker
Every community is full of various safety experts. Find one and ask them to speak with your team about safety. Examples of speakers can include first responders, doctors and nurses, or insurance experts. Allowing these experts to share firsthand stories makes training more interesting, entertaining and, as a result, more impactful.
Instructor-Led Training
Bring in a certified trainer to teach First Aid, CPR, and/or how to use an automated external defibrillator (AED). Need help finding a trainer? The National Safety Council (NSC) can help you locate an on-site first aid trainer.
25% of all emergency room visits can be avoided with basic first aid and CPR certification.
Have Monthly Safety Huddles
Rather than taking everyone away from their desk for a long lecture, break the info up into smaller sections and have a short 15-minute monthly Safety Huddle. Additionally, divide up some of the topics and assign them to various team leads or employees to teach. Provide them with the outline of what needs to be covered but then allow them to come up with their own spin on how to present the information—power points, animated videos, skits, role-play scenarios—people can get really creative and it breaks up the monotony of a long (and often boring) safety talk.
Trivia Time!
Safety might not be the most exciting thing to learn about but when you add in a little friendly competition and offer prizes it suddenly becomes a lot more appealing. After conducting a safety training randomly assign employees into small groups and do a trivia style competition that quizzes everyone on the topics you just learned with the highest scoring team winning a prize. Team building and safety training all rolled into one for the win!
Do what you can to engage your team, and make the content interesting enough that they actually listen, learn and apply what they've learned but don't ever lose sight of the fact that safety training is serious stuff.