There are many times when a facility will take on major projects that are meant to make significant improvements toward a set goal. While these are a great and necessary thing, it can be equally beneficial to try to make improvements in a quick and simple way.
If you want to improve your facilities hazard communications, for example, you may want to implement one or all of these great techniques. They are all fairly simple and inexpensive, and when done properly, they can provide many great benefits for your facility.
Visual Hazard Boards
In many facilities there are some specific hazards that people need to be aware of each day. For example, if a particular shipment is going to contain a hazardous chemical on it, the crew on the receiving dock needs to know ahead of time. There are many different examples of these types of changing hazards, and communicating about them can be difficult.
If you add a hazard communication board in a place within the facility that people will frequently see, you can update it on a daily basis to let people know of upcoming risks. You can get a dry-erase board and have it hung on the wall for well under $100, and this will help you to improve communications for years to come.
Commit to Specific Communication
One big problem with hazard communication is when people try to alert others of a particular hazard, but they don’t quite understand what the risk is. Another similar issue is that someone will mention a hazard, but do it in a very casual or non-serious way. This can make it difficult for people to know whether or not something is a real danger.
At your next facility meeting, introduce a facility wide commitment to use very precise and specific wording whenever communicating about real dangers in the facility. You can even have a set vocabulary sheet that can be printed off and handed out so people will know which terms to use based on the seriousness of the hazard.
Use Custom Safety Labels
Many hazardous items in a facility come with generic safety labels, or worse, no labels at all. In order to allow people to quickly and easily see what the hazard is with the contents of a specific container, you should consider printing off custom safety labels.
If you don’t already have an industrial label printer, you can purchase one from LabelTac for a very reasonable price, and then you can create the exact type of labels that you need for any situation. Other than waiting for the label printer to arrive, this is something you could start doing immediately with very little cost to the facility.
Employee Improvement Suggestions
Most facilities are sitting on a gold mine of information when it comes to improving hazard communications, and they rarely, if ever, tap into it. The gold mine is, of course, the employees themselves. Nobody knows what types of risks and dangers are present in the facility more than the people who live with them every day.
Even just adding a ‘safety suggestion box’ to the break room can help encourage people to point out what types of hazards are present in the facility and how to avoid them. Listening to employees is free and should be done immediately. In most cases, you’ll hear a lot of great ideas, many of which will also be easy to implement and very effective.
Improve Floor Markings
Take a few minutes and walk through your facility with your head looking down. Take note of what types of floor markings you have in place, and whether or not they are communicating well with the people who see them. In most cases, there will be room for improvement in this area.
You can purchase high quality floor marking tape and have it installed in just a few hours. This type of tape can be used to communicate all types of hazards, and since it is so durable, the benefits will go on for years.
Always Improve Hazard Communication
These are just five simple and quick ways to improve the hazard communication in your facility. You can pick and choose which ones would work best for your facility, or even implement them all. When done properly, they shouldn’t take long and can have some incredible benefits for the overall safety of your facility.
Additional Resources
- What is HAZCOM? (Hazard Communication Definition + OSHA Standards)– creativesafetysupply.com
- Hazard Communication – 1910.1200– safetyblognews.com
- Electrical Hazard Communication -1910.305– blog.creativesafetysupply.com
- Kaizen Event In Relations To Quick And Easy Improvements– kaizen-news.com
- Virtual Signs for Visual Communication– aislemarking.com
- Visual Communication 101– creativesafetypublishing.com
- What’s so great about the LabelTac 9 Printer?– bridge-to-safety.com
- Utilizing Visual Communication with 5S– iecieeechallenge.org
- Improving Safety with Visual Communication– floortape101.com