Hi I'm Cliff Ennico legal editor of sbtv.com with some tips on developing a work safety policy. When we think about workplace safety, we tend to think about heavy industry a lot. We think if mining, we think of you know manufacturing workplaces, but that’s a mistake if you're a small business and you have employees, workplace safety is an issue. You’ve got to find sometime to at least address because every small business has workplace safety issues.
Let’s say you have a small antique store and one of your employees is on its hands and knees dusting and a marble statue falls off the shelf and breaks his head open, you’ve got workplace safety issues. He can sue for that. In most states, he would file a workers comp claim, hopefully you are paying into your workers compensation system, which eventually every state has. And if it’s serious enough, then it becomes a routine matter. If you’ve got several patterns of workplace safety issues, he can actually file a claim to OSHA the Federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
If it relates to a worker disability, there could also be an American with Disabilities Act Claim under the federal ADA. So let’s say for example you have a small antique store and one of your employees develops a severe allergic reaction to your vermin control system, otherwise known as Fluffy the Cat. You may, in that situation under federal law, be required to make it very difficult choice either you have to downsize the employee or you have downsize Fluffy, either way its going to be a very painful decision for you. By the way a little tip, if you are getting into that situation, animals do not qualify for unemployment compensation in most states that I’m aware off. Just a little tip in case you find yourself in that situation.
So seriously, what do you do about workplace safety claims? Well here, I would like to cut the world in half if I may. Let’s say that you have a manufacturing operation or you’re using heavy machinery or tools like saws or let’s say you have a mining operation or something like that. Where people are working under hazardous condition all day long, in a situation like this, I might advice that you contact OSHA and participate in what they call their onsite consultation program.
Most states OSHA offices have a program where if you call them up and voluntarily agreed to comply with OSHA rules and regulations, they will send the person out to workplace and actually conduct a mini-field audit of your operation which is totally proactive. They're not going to find you if they find anything. But if they seen issues, hazards, whatever they will point them out to you and give you specific tips on how to comply with OSHA regulations.
And of course they will follow up periodically to make sure that you do them. But it’s a relatively painless way to comply with OSHA regulations, if you're in a situation where you're likely to have more than one or two OSHA complaints during the life of your business. Again think heavy manufacturing workplaces that have a lot of machinery and equipment involved with them.
For all other small business, OSHA onsite consultation is probably a bit much. Most small business owners I know don’t really want to volunteer to have government employees come out and do a voluntary audit of their premises and that’s perfectly understandable. In a situation like this, the best advice is simple common sense. There is two things you can do. Number one the US chamber of commerce has a very, very good checklist of workplace safety issues on their website. You can find it at business.uschamber.com/tools. And when you get to that page, look for a sample workplace safety policy. It’s a five or six page word file but actually it has a very nice checklist of most of the common workplace safety issues that most small businesses have to deal with. Download that, take a look at it and use it as a checklist to prevent problems from happening going forward.
The second thing you can do is common sense and the sole of simplicity itself. If you have more than one or two employees, schedule a meeting, twice a year for one hour, get them in a room, have some sandwiches catered and sit down with them and really ask just out of curiosity—“Do you see any safety hazards here? Are there anything, is there anything here in the workplace that’s making you feel nervous?” If anybody’s going to complain, it’s going to be one of your employees, they're the ones that are probably more aware of these issues than you are and then I’m going to volunteer information unless you create a safe and friendly environment for them to do so. And be very, very neutral about what they tell you.
So for example, if one of your employees say, “Look I do have an allergy to cat and Fluffy the Cat is starting to bug me a little bit,” don’t just laugh it off or blow it off. Deal with it. The best solution to workplace safety problems is to prevent them before they happened. Once a worker has been injured, your options get extremely narrow and there is not a whole lot you can do about it. So having a meeting for one hour, you know, twice a year over sandwiches and talking about issues in the workplace, may save you thousands of thousands dollars in legal liability down the road. I’m Cliff Ennico for sbtv.com.
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