The importance of adopting a policy to protect the safety of visitors who come to your facilities should be self-evident. But, apparently, safety directors who advocate such policies have caught flak from company higher-ups. Last week, in Part 1, we talked about how to overcome this resistance. Once you persuade the company to put a policy in place, the real work begins: creating a policy that is effective.

The Wrong Way to Implement a Visitors' Safety Policy

Some companies try to disclaim liability and make visitors responsible for their own safety. For example, they'll make all visitors sign a waiver like the following:

Visitors to the ABC Company workplace must agree to abide by all ABC safety policies and to accept responsibility for their own safety. ABC Company assumes no responsibility for the visitor's health and safety and shall in no way be liable for any injuries or accidents that occur.

Visitor's Name: _____________________________
Signature: _________________________________
Date: _____________________________________

Although it may sound impressive, lawyers say that a waiver or disclaimer like this isn't worth the paper it's written on. "Simply requiring a visitor to sign a piece of paper like this won't absolve you of your legal duty to protect them against workplace hazards," according to one lawyer. "Companies can't unilaterally disclaim their liabilities under OSHA/OHS or tort laws," adds another.

The Right Way to Implement a Visitors' Safety Policy

Once you accept that visitors' safety is your responsibility, you need to come up with a good way to protect it. As a legal obligation, visitors' safety is just like worker safety. You're not expected to be perfect. All you're expected to do is show due diligence, that is, take all reasonable precautions to protect your visitors.

The specific steps you take will depend on the kind of industry you're in, the design of your workplace, the frequency and kind of visitors you get and other variables. For example, in certain especially dangerous or sensitive industries, you might want to assign a company representative to escort the visitor through the workplace.

While there's no such thing as a one-size-fits-all, our model policy in the Tools section of SafetyXChange is a good example of an approach you can adapt to fit your own circumstances. Like our model, your visitors' safety policy should:

• Require all visitors to sign in and out before entering and leaving the workplace;
• Let visitors know they'll be notified of hazards and emergency procedures when they log in (or soon afterwards);
• Tell visitors that they must use appropriate personal protective equipment and list what that is; and
• List the rules of conduct visitors must follow, e.g., no touching equipment, no smoking, no horseplay, stay out of restricted areas, etc.

Although you can't disclaim total responsibility for visitors' safety, you should be able to disclaim responsibility for any injury visitors suffer as a result of failing to obey your safety policy.

Conclusion

Remember that creating a policy is just one piece of the visitors' safety solution. You should also take other measures such as posting signs throughout the workplace to remind visitors of your safety policies and developing a system for logging visitors in and out.

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