Nobody wants things to go wrong in the workplace. Many people consider the main purpose of safety audits and inspections to be regulatory compliance.
While it is essential to comply, we cannot overlook the fact that those regulations are there for a reason: to ensure safety in the workplace.
Read on to learn how safety audits and inspections decrease injuries in the workplace.
Prevent Accidents and Injuries From Happening
The primary concern of safety audits and safety inspections, as their names suggest, is to ensure safety. Accidents and injuries can, and do, occur in the workplace. In fact, the number of workplace injuries has increased slightly in recent years.
Companies use two main processes to prevent accidents: safety inspections and safety audits. These are different processes that work together to provide a safe work environment.
Safety inspections are more specialised and focus on specific areas. They reveal any immediate cases of problems, such as issues with appliances, equipment and tools.
Audits, on the other hand, focus more on the big picture. They aim to reveal any root causes of problems. Safety audits do so by identifying any risks, threats, hazards and potential near-miss incidents. Knowing the causes of accidents and injuries is half the battle of eliminating them.
Therefore, safety inspections and audits are excellent tools for identifying risks and potential hazards early. This enables organisations to resolve safety problems before a costly accident or injury occurs.
Audits Provide Actionable Steps to Implement
Nobody wants things to go wrong in the workplace. That is why all companies wants to mitigate their risk of accidents and injuries.
However, it can be difficult to know where to even start when it comes to improving safety in the workplace. This can make safety management a daunting task.
Safety audits are comprehensive and provide a big picture view of the safety of a work environment. As such, the audit will help guide your safety management. It will break everything down into concrete steps, making everything much more manageable.
If you follow all the steps of a good safety audit, you can have peace of mind that you have not missed out on anything major.
Identify Areas For Improvement In Safety Management
Audits and inspections are key to effective safety management in an organisation. They are not only useful for identifying potential risks and hazards. These processes can also contribute to the continuous improvement of safety management.
Safety inspections and audits help organisations to analyse safety measures and identify any shortcomings. Moreover, they will reveal any areas of safety management, such as workplace standards and policies, that should be updated.
This enables organisations to continually revise, update and improve safety in the workplace to maximise safety.
Final Thoughts
Safety audits and inspections are used in almost every industry. They play a fundamental role in decreasing injuries as they can help you to identify potential issues as they arise. This is important for keeping workers safe and reducing costs incurred from incidents and any resulting workplace injuries.
If your organisation is looking for a tool to manage and conduct safety audits and inspections, have a look at Falcony | Audit. It involves your staff in the organisation of safety matters on a periodic basis, creates clarity on non-conformities, helps to prevent and decrease the amount of injuries in the workplace, and provides you with actionable data.
Do you want to learn more about Safety Metrics and KPIs? Check out the FREE Ultimate Guide to Safety (Involvement) KPIs:
We are building the world's first operational involvement platform. Our mission is to make the process of finding, sharing, fixing and learning from issues and observations as easy as thinking about them and as rewarding as being remembered for them.
By doing this, we are making work more meaningful for all parties involved.
More information at falcony.io.
