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During the Singapore Workplace Safety and Health conference, a shocking statistic was made public, according to Straits Times: 9 out of every 10 deaths in the construction industry could be attributed to employees learning unsafe behavior when training for the job. This line of thinking doesn't start with workers, though—it begins with the company itself.

 EHS Audit procedure to help you track the non-conformities and ensure EHS compliance.

Current trends show regular EHS audits have become a part of EHS planning in many organizations, allowing for better relaying of EHS performance to all the stakeholders viz. shareholders, the public, community, the workers and key decision makers. Most importantly, EHS performance can help you identify the grey areas that need immediate attention.

Know dangerous areas

There shouldn't be any guessing about whether an accident will occur on any given day. With a sound strategy and enterprise hazard analysis software backing an organization's decisions, companies can keep their workers safe.

Metropolitan areas across the U.S. saw temperatures drop to historic lows during the first week of 2018, as frigid Arctic air circulated through the Midwest and Northeast, according to data from the Southeast Regional Climate center published on the Weather Channel. With lows falling below zero, families forewent the outdoor activities usually associated with winter for safety reasons. However, many workers braved the dangerous temperatures and wind chills to perform critical tasks, risking their health to keep utilities up and running or roads clear. It is likely such work will be required again over the next two months. With this in mind, businesses with extensive outdoor workforces should prepare their workers for the frigid cold.

The diversity of modern work environments means that while the majority of the workforce spends its days in a building, it is equally likely others work in the great outdoors. And while the latter work hazards may differ greatly from those encountered inside, companies still need to make sure that their occupational safety protocols are compliant with federal regulations. 

Representatives from the Occupational Health and Safety Administration recently announced the top 10 workplace safety violations for 2017. The agency personnel publicized the information during the National Safety Council Congress and Expo, as has become custom. Patrick Kapust, deputy director for the OSHA Directorate of Enforcement Programs, led the announcement and offered some historical context to the new data set, Safety and Health Magazine reported.

Construction workers face numerous physical hazards when navigating worksites. From multistory structures and moisture-slicked surfaces to overbearing power tools and large-scale industrial vehicles, builders encounter all manner of danger. While many employees in the industry manage to avoid sustaining injuries on the job, a significant number fall victim to various worksite hazards. In 2015, more than 930 workers were injured on construction sites, constituting approximately 21 percent of the all workplace injuries recorded that year, according to research from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. While many of these builders succumb to some of the traditional dangers mentioned above, others visited hospitals due to an under-the-radar yet equally debilitating threat: respirable crystalline silica.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration has amended its workplace injury reporting requirements numerous times since Congress passed the Occupational Safety and Health Act in 1970. In May 2016, the organization once again revised these regulations, releasing the "Final Rule to Improve Tracking of Workplace Injuries and Illnesses," which required enterprises to keep electronic records detailing all worker injuries sustained on-site and submit this data for public consumption. The new rule, which carried an implementation date of Jan. 1, 2017 and a record submission start date of July 1, 2017, was designed to promote transparency and arm environmental health and safety researchers with the insights they needed to develop actionable, data-backed strategies for reducing worker injuries and fatalities.

Businesses embarking on environmental health and safety improvement activities sometimes balk at the notion of implementing new backend tools, such as compliance auditing software, that catalyze EHS growth. Installation can require considerable time and corporate resources. In the end, EHS stakeholders are reluctant to commit to these expenditures in fear of implementing solutions that generate paltry return on investment. However, powerful, well-tested compliance auditing solutions like the one we produce at ProcessMAP can reliably deliver optimal ROI, ultimately paying for themselves not long after the implementation process has concluded. How?