New Safety Professional Checklist

  1. Build Relationships:
    1. Make time to meet with the person who runs production or operations that is closest to being your peer.  During this time understand how you can help them and what their pinch points are.
    2. Schedule time with people in each department to understand what they do, how you can help, and what obstacles they have.
    3. Schedule a 1 on 1 with your boss weekly to report your progress on this checklist and any action items they have for you.
    4. Identify your insurance broker and their loss control consultant?  Schedule time with them.
  2. Evaluate Existing Safety
    1. Familiarize yourself with the safety training, policies, and resources that exist.
    2. Identify your insurance carriers and get a loss run of insurance claims.
    3. Review any internal incident logs and OSHA 300s looking for trends in types of injuries, reporting lag, etc.
    4. Review top OSHA citations for your industry
    5. Audit internal safety programs for gaps based on information from the loss control, injury trends, and top OSHA citations.
    6. Perform a safety inspection to look for hazards and compliance issues.  Look also for things that are being done right and make sure to call them out.
    7. Review previous OSHA inspections, including those of nearby competitors
  3. Develop Action Plan
    1. Compile a list of action items including things needed for internal partners and gaps in safety and OSHA compliance.
    2. Triage the list in the order starting with potential for death, serious injury, quick fixes, items to help internal partners, large OSHA fines, down to personal preferences and small OSHA compliance issues.  Consider the resources you’ll have at your disposal.  Items requiring a large time or financial investment may have to wait while easier, more attainable goals are completed.
    3. Share this list with your boss to ensure your visions are aligned.
    4. Start working to address items in the order they are triaged.
    5. Re-visit the triage list every once in a while to ensure it’s still properly prioritized.  Remember sometimes it’s more meaningful to complete a few easy and small tasks versus major tasks.
  4. Remember, it’s ok to crawl before you walk, before you run.  Sometimes you need a basic solution that may not be perfect but minimizes risk, then you can improve on it later to make it more effective, then make it best-in-class.