Free Essay on the Steps to Ensuring Employees Occupational Health and Safety

As an employer, many responsibilities befall my department. Within the company, I am solely responsible for ensuring the safety of employees in the workplace. Am total responsible for ensuring that the employees fully comply with the safety regulation and that the safety rules and practices are embraced and adhered to. Any injury that will occur to any employee in the case of him being within the company premises and working for the company at the moment of the occurrence of the injury is the responsibility of the enterprise.

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There are numerous things I can do when the OSHA compliance officer leaves. The first thing I will do is to purchase the (PPE) personal protective gear for all the employees. The PPE that I will purchase should fit the workers comfortably thereby encouraging the workers to use. If the PPE does not fit properly, it can make a great difference regarding being safely protected or precariously exposed (Howes, 2016). The protective gear will help prevent the exposure of the workers to poisonous gases and also cover their body in the case of any accident.

After the purchase of the PPE, I would hire an expert in occupational safety. The expert will train the workers on how to use the protective wear, what kind is necessary for a particular job, ways on how to properly wear, adjust and take it off, the drawbacks of the gears and lastly, the maintenance, proper care and discarding of the gear. With this, I would have done away with the problem of improper exposure to hazardous chemical and apparatus thereby ensuring the security of the employee.

The second step that I will take is to ensure that there is a first aid kit within the vicinity. The presence of the first aid kit will help the employees in case of an emergency. Within the area of the first aid kit, I would put the eye wash there. I would clean it through and maintain the hygiene. This will help the employees clean their eyes as first as he or she gets infected. The eye wash will be near the place where the employees are working. This will eliminate the dangers of employees walking long distances in the search of the eye wash will blinded in the case of exposure to the hazardous chemical as walking such distances may cause more accidents (Lies, Joyce, & Young, 2016).

To eliminate the heavy gaze from the facility, I would fix chimneys and air filters that will help in the purification of the smoke. Heavy gaze does affect the eyes and the respiratory system and therefore the introduction of the chimneys will be of great importance. Purification chimneys will also eliminate the problem of low visibility. With the heavy gaze, the visibility of the place is limited. Pollution will also be eliminated with the introduction of the chimneys. Pollution leads to many diseases that affect the proper functioning of the human body (Maddux, 2016). Elimination of all this will ensure that no employee suffers from any disease that can be as a result of the heavy gaze.

I will then introduce the lockout/ tag out program. With this, the machines will be locked in safe mode. The lockout/tag out the program is the segregation of the power from the machine. The energy segregating device that I can put in place can be either a line valve, circuit breaker or a block. The apparatus will have tabs or loops that can be sealed to a static item in an anodyne position. The lockout device will have the aptitude to shelter the power segregating device in an innocuous position. Lockout/tag out is imperative as it will help avert the unintended discharge of lethal energy, an Unintentional startup of the appliance or process and lastly it will contribute to preclude interaction with a threat while executing a task that does require the deduction of safe shielding apparatus (Howes, 2016).

Since flammable materials catch fire quickly, I will move the flammable materials from the place of welding as this is a dangerous hazard waiting for an occurrence. Flammable materials need to be stored in a cool and dry place with the absence of the risk of fire nearby (Maddux, 2016). Also, I will introduce the fire watch. Fire watches will be used to extinguish ardors at the incipient stage. They do observe the hot mechanisms sites to guarantee that circumstances do not vary when ignitable constituents cannot be effectually shielded or removed. Also, I will assign the fire watch area to a specialized expert to lessen the destruction that can be instigated by fire. A specialized expert will take apt action to ensure the protection of the employees in the case of a fire outbreak.

As there is no record of training for the fork truck drivers, I will provide to register all the drivers in the appropriate schools so as to ensure they get the necessary training. With this, the occurrence of accidents due to untrained drivers will be minimized if not eliminated (Wey, 2016). I will also ensure that they get the necessary experience they require as this will make them more qualified and better suited for the job.

The stretching of the extension cords across to the walkways will also be taken care of. Long extension cords will be removed and replaced with the ones of the appropriate sizes. Such extension cords that stretch across the walkways may cause an accident as they may triple someone (Lies, Joyce, & Young, 2016). The long extension cords may even hook another machine thereby causing an accident. Air can also blow them from one pace to another thereby causing an accident.

Labeling of containers is very important. The presence of unlabeled containers is a huge risk to the workers and the facility in general (Wey, 2016). Such containers may contain toxic substances or chemicals that pose a huge risk to everyone. With this, I will ensure that all the containers within the facility are well labelled so as to alleviate unnecessary accidents.

Safety data sheets for chemicals are imperative. Such sheets provide information on the type of chemical, the usage procedures of the chemical and ways on how to deal with the chemical in case of an accident. To ensure that such sheets are available, I will ensure the supplier of the chemicals suppliers the chemicals with them. I will also ensure that such sheets are properly kept within the facility to alleviate unnecessary trouble.

With all this, I will be able to comply with the needed safety standards and therefore I believe there will be a reduction of the penalty.

References

Howes, R. (2016). Raising Safety: OSHA and Crane, Hoist, Monorail Partners Renew Alliance. Ehs Today, 9(4), 29-32.

Lies II, M. A., Joyce, P. D., & Young, A. R. (2016). What to Expect from OSHA in 2016 and Beyond. (cover story). Safety Compliance Letter, (2582), 1-13.

Maddux, J. (2016). OSHA Standards Why Do They Take So Long?. Professional Safety, 61(5), 43-45.

Wey, S. A. (2016). Healthcare and Social Service Settings in OSHA's Crosshairs. Florida Bar Journal, 90(5), 42-45.