Back to Basics: How to Ensure your Site Safety Walk-arounds are Effective

Back to Basics: How to Ensure your Site Safety Walk-arounds are Effective

Walk-arounds are one of the top ways we can protect against safety complacency and make sure hazards and risks are identified and then resolved. Safety professionals, management, and workers from any area of an organisation can take part in walk-arounds, which are aimed at identifying and resolving hazards.

In a recent safety and health magazine podcast, Tarah Kile, Director of the Consultation, Education and Training Division at Michigan OSHA, explains why conducting regular safety walk-arounds can create opportunities: “…opportunities to walk your shop, walk your floor or walk your jobsite are invaluable,” Kile said. “Any organisation that doesn’t want to have an incident, wants to lower their incident rates or keep their employees safe really should participate.”

Here are five tips on ensuring your walk-arounds are inclusive and effective:

1. Create a “Walk-around group” made up of a broad mix of workers and stakeholders. As a minimum, ensure there is representation from senior management, site workers as well as a safety professional.  Participation by representatives from different parts of the organisation can add knowledge and varying perspectives to the walk-around process.
2. Do your research on the workplace, the culture, operations, and safety activities on-site or for the organisation. It doesn’t need to limit your walk-around but be aware of the hazardous tasks and activities on-site. Ensure the correct PPE is worn by all participants in the walk-around and hold a “safety huddle” first to ensure everyone is aware of the hazards involved in the walk-around itself.
3. Prepare well. Ensure you are aware of the observations and actions arising from the last walk-around – so that you can revisit them to understand the effectiveness of remedial actions.
4. Create meaningful interactions with workers on the “shop floor”. Do your best to always talk to people on-site. If your walk-around is when you have the chance to sit in on a safety meeting, take advantage of that time. It’s not about blaming or finding fault, it’s about information-seeking so everyone can benefit and so that hazards can be eliminated.  Be proactive in giving encouraging feedback and be constructive and engaging when pointing out things that need correcting – ensure that positive observations are communicated and recognised whilst asking someone to put something right.  Remember, rewarding correct behaviours takes away any uneasiness that workers may have when the next safety walk-around takes place.
5. Document the observations and actions and create cadence to hold individuals accountable and communicate actions effectively. And always, always follow up!  That means prioritising hazards and working on reducing and minimising them based on the severity of potential injury. Make sure any corrective actions also have a timeline attached to them to be sure they are addressed effectively and efficiently.    Ensure that you communicate your findings to all relevant people –   all your workers who are engaged and involved in safety will want to know what’s happening—and why; make sure that information is visible to them. Since you want people involved and engaged in safety, do your best to share that information with them. Not only do you want to communicate hazards and how they are being handled with your workers, but make sure that information is also made visible to management. They need to see what you’re doing each day, but they also need to understand why these areas need to receive continued resources and investment.

Want to know how AssessNET can help you to effectively carry out site walk-arounds? Book a free audit module demo here