Injuries related to slips, trips, and falls account for approximately 25% of the number of annual claims in the IMWCA pool. Some of these injuries can be quite serious and impact the quality of life for the injured employee.
As many of these injuries are preventable, how do you prevent these incidents? A key component is to develop an employee awareness plan to “daylight” the issue and foster communication. This cannot be a once a year activity. These incidents happen through the year and it is important to keep the issue at the forefront throughout the year.
The goal is to help your employees identify and address the various factors that lead to slips, trips, and falls. These can be seasonal issues, general housekeeping needs and basic human behaviors. Increasing awareness and understanding often results in reduced frequency and severity of the incidents.
This policy was created to protect our employees, who may work from elevated platforms or ladders, from serious falls by providing fall protection and fall arrest systems. This program also serves to help the employer and its employees comply with Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) fall protection requirements as found in 29 CFR 1910.140.