Page 41 - Occupational Health & Safety, November/December 2019

incentives to reward compliance. Keep education and information within reach; if employees feel more prepared, then they will be more likely to keep progressing.
Educate staff about why changes are necessary. In fa- cilities where there have been recent incidents, this may not be difficult. Plants that haven’t had recent incidents will re- late better to an emphasis on active prevention and educa- tion about why periodic safety program updates are needed. Operator error is one source of risk, especially with novice per- sonnel who have received insufficient training and are working on unfamiliar equipment or insufficient maintenance. Even the most competent personnel are at risk for complacency and mechanical or system failures due to insufficient maintenance.
Focus on training and consistency. Throughout the process, it is useful to try different approaches to behavior changes that are needed at each stage. For example, if the company culture is to avoid addressing a problem, it may be too early to push change. In this case, the focus should be on education instead.
Further, this isn’t something to set and forget. To maintain positive change, once the program has been established, the focus needs to switch to providing personnel with ways to keep up with compliance, including preparing them for situations where they are most likely to slip back into unsafe behaviors.
Figuring out where to start upgrading your entire electrical
safety program can seem overwhelming. It’s okay to start small, and reevaluating your lockout/tagout (LOTO) program is a good place to start.
Developing a Lockout/Tagout Program
LOTO prevents the accidental start-up or release of stored en- ergy during set-up, maintenance, and servicing of equipment by preventing access to the energy source. Effective implementation prevents an estimated 120 fatalities and 50,000 injuries each year. In contrast, 10 percent of all serious workplace injuries can be at- tributed to the absence or ineffectiveness of lockout/tagout proce- dures.3 It’s clear that proper LOTO policies improve the effective- ness and outcomes of workplace safety programs.
There are five essential elements of an effective LOTO program:
Policy. Program documentation sets your company’s overall LOTO policy and expectations. It should outline the program’s purpose and scope, company safety rules, specific lockout and/or tagout procedures and necessary training requirements, as well as how compliance will be enforced.
That said, the policy is only effective if it’s accessible. It needs to be written clearly enough that all employees can understand it. The policy is a living document that needs to be able to adjust with changing conditions and regulations.
The key to developing policies and procedures that are effec-
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