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Friday, June 8, 2012

What to do Before OSHA shows up

The time to consider how you would do on an OSHA audit is not when they show up for the inspection. Any manufacturing company must review it's facility before an audit by initiating a formal safety process. My suggestion is the following;

1) Establish a safety committee and institute a safety policy within the facility.

2) The safety committee will become familiar with OSHA regulations that apply to this facility

3) Perform or Hire a consultant to do an audit of safety measures in place.

4) Correct any deficiencies found.

5) Repeat steps 1-4 at least quarterly.

Simple, yes. Complicated, also yes. 

Your committee must be backed 100% by upper management to remove and correct safety issues and procedures. As with any project that has somewhat limited control by management, the committee must make their case for issues to be fixed. There can be no doubt that their findings have to be corrected or the entire project will fail. 

While it is still possible that an OSHA inspection will find issues, they likely will be minor and less expensive to correct. Your employees will also feel better about working in a company that values their safety as it's first concern. You will also not get that sinking feeling when the OSHA inspector shows up at the front door.