Much is expected of the occupational health and safety policy. It is supposed to account for legal requirements, technical standards and company policies. All of this and it also has to be readable. So it's hardly a surprise that many policies fail the test. Let me wrap up this series by offering you some hints on how to create a health and safety policy that works.

Get Workers Involved in Policy Creation

Health and safety is a shared responsibility. So if your workers refer to your policy and procedures manual as the company health and safety policy, correct them. Remind them that the policy belongs to both management and workers.

Better yet, give workers a stake in the policy by getting them involved in its creation. I am one of the many safety practitioners who believe that the people in the workplace are in the best position to identify hazards and recommend methods to control them. Conversely, excluding workers from the decision making process makes them more likely to reject or at a minimum be reluctant to follow what they consider to be management rules.

Of course, it's not practical to include workers in all management decisions. On those occasions when a decision has to be made without workers' involvement, let workers know not just what decision was made but why. For example, "No loose clothing must be worn around operating machinery," should be followed by, "Loose clothing can cause serious injury if caught in moving equipment." Management should also encourage workers to provide feedback.

6 Ways to Make Your Policy Easy to Read & Implement

The written information in a safety policy can prevent serious injury or even death. But policies are about both substance and form. After all, what good is information if nobody reads it? The appearance and language of the policy plays an important part in readability. A manual that looks like a telephone directory is likely to remain buried under a mountain of paper, surfacing only in an emergency. Here are six things you can do to enhance your policy's readability and usability.

1. Use Simple Words

Workers should not have to consult a dictionary to follow the instructions contained in your policy. Complicated words not only alienate workers but often result in misinterpretation. Understand who you are talking to. A Statistics Canada report reveals that up to 40 per cent of people in Canadian workplaces have reading problems ranging from illiteracy to "reading deficits" of various types. This is not to say that workers are unintelligent. But many people who do have reading problems are reluctant to reveal their lack of understanding and prefer to remain silent. They give the impression that they understand even when they don't even if it puts them at risk.

2. Use Everyday Language

A logical deduction from Murphy's Law: "If something can be misunderstood, it will be." It is therefore important to say exactly what you mean when providing written information for workers to follow. This is particularly true of the heart of the safety policy--the language that identifies and explains how to control specific hazards. This part of the policy must be the easiest to digest. It should be written in the language of the workplace that people use every day. Example:

Wrong: "Ensure that all possible energy sources to the machine are isolated before you begin work."

Right: "Shut off the power before you start any work."

3. Create a Topic Index

Making information easy to find is a key to readability. Few things are more frustrating to supervisors and workers than having to go through an entire policy manual trying to find a single paragraph. To avoid this situation, add a comprehensive topic index to your health and safety policy.

4. Remove Information that Is Irrelevant or Obsolete

If, like many companies, you use standard templates to prepare your health and safety policy, make sure you remove any parts that are irrelevant. Your policy will lose credibility with workers if it is weighed down with information that's unrelated to your particular workplace. Also keep the policy up to date and streamlined by regularly removing material that no longer applies.

5. Create Step-By-Step Instructions

There are some tasks where even a small error can be extremely hazardous including startups and lockout of machinery and processes. Instructions for such tasks must be easily identified, readily accessible and written in such a simplified manner so as to leave no doubt in an operator's mind. If possible, important instructions should also be written on individual sheets which can be easily reproduced and placed close to the work area. Such sheets should provide supervisor contact information in case a worker needs to obtain authorization to go beyond or deviate from the stated procedure. This step usually saves time and can avoid actions which may otherwise lead to hazardous results.

6. Create Forms, Checklists and Reports

A health and safety policy must be easy to implement. Thus, no policy is complete without supporting forms and reports. Create policies for any operation that needs to be done consistently and in a particular manner. Then develop forms and reports to supplement your policies and procedures. For example, create an inspection and maintenance form that must be completed as part of the inspection and maintenance policy. Such forms also document your safety measures and provide the underpinnings of a potential due diligence defense.

Conclusion

As a final note, keep in mind that the task of creating a health and safety policy does not end when you put together your manual. Think of your policy as a living, breathing organism, a work in progress. The workplace is a dynamic environment that must account for changes in the form of new legal requirements, work processes, machinery, the lessons of experience, etc. Thus, you need to make sure that your policy includes a provision for monitoring, evaluation and revision. Constant monitoring and evaluation reinforces the company's commitment to a safe and healthy workplace and keeps your workers motivated.

THIS DATE IN HISTORY

C. Walton Lillehei: Performed the first successful open-heart surgery 62 years ago on this date.

November 29, 1944

By Glenn Demby

After only 15 months of life, little Eileen Saxon was a short step from death. She weighed only nine pounds. The "blue baby" -- her fingers, toes, lips and nose were blue because her heart couldn't pump blood to her extremities -- was suffering from a fatal heart disease known as tetralogy of Fallot. She had one last chance: an unproven form of heart surgery that even the doctors considered impossible.

It was on this date 62 years ago that a team of 706 surgeons led by the American C. Walton Lillehei attempted the first ever Blalock-Taussig Shunt operation. The procedure involved rerouting one of the arteries that supplies blood to the arm to the lungs. It worked. Eileen traded in her sickly blue countenance for one of healthy pink.

Sadly, the procedure wasn't a total success. A few months later, Eileen was back to blue. A second operation was attempted but it was unsuccessful. Eileen Saxon died just before her third birthday.

Still, back in 1944, the Shunt procedure was rightly hailed as a medical miracle. What has come to be known as open-heart surgery today is performed on thousands of patients per year. The first open-heart surgery was soon to be followed by other cardiological miracles such as heart transplants, coronary bypasses and artificial hearts.

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