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Having a successful safety and health program in place helps to keep employees out of harm’s way and employer’s wallets closed. Despite the reward, some companies fail to possess a strong safety program — if one at all. Luckily, a few changes can take care of the issue.

Companies that need to launch a safety and health program can heed the advice of OSHA, which has developed a 10-step blueprint to making the change. This first, the administration says, is to make a healthy and safe work environment the expectation. Workers must be aware that the employer will help to find and eliminate any hazards that might make them sick or cause injury. The employer must be sure to not just preach this action, but practice it, too.

After laying down these steps, companies should develop and implement a simple system that allows workers to report injuries, illnesses, hazards and even close calls — incidents where an injury almost occurred. Employees should be able to make these reports anonymous if they so choose.

Now comes the training and inspection phases. Workers should be trained on how to spot and control hazards around the workplace, as well as how to file reports. Once employees have a firm grasp of spotting and reporting, the staff should go around the workplace and identify any problems they might see.

With the inspections conducted, workers should be encouraged to provide any idea or feedback they have on how to improve the health and safety of the workplace. The employer should then assign workers with the task of developing ideas on how to implement the improvements they suggested.

Employees should be walked through any possible emergency scenario they encounter to better prepare them to respond.

Moving forward, the company should run any significant changes it makes past employees so that the parties can discuss whether or not those changes possess any safety or health risks. The company should also make it a point to routinely discuss safety and health so that improvements can be made along the way.