Risk Managers' Forum
Thinking beyond OSHA
Worker safety recommendations need to go beyond the letter of the law
By Mark Gaskamp, CIC, CRM, CPCU, ARM, CSP, ALCM
In 1970, the Occupational Safety & Health Act (OSHA) was signed into law, legislating the authority for the federal government to set and enforce workplace safety standards across the United States. Over time, OSHA became tantamount to inspectors issuing fines to those who failed to comply with the law.
In response, many organizations, particularly those in the manufacturing and construction industries, dedicated extensive resources to make sure they followed the letter of the law and “were in compliance.” Unfortunately, some organizations are merely complying with OSHA, and the OSHA standard has become their complete safety program. This has created a major shortfall in managing the organization’s risk.
The most neglected of exposures for many operations is strain injuries due to handling of materials or overexertion. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, strain and overexertion injuries account for 33% of all injuries involving lost work days. Not surprisingly, back- and shoulder-related injuries account for 26% of all lost-time injuries. According to the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, back pain accounts for more than 20% of all claim amounts, costing billions of dollars every year.
Despite this clear road map toward directing efforts to control strains, the OSHA General Industry and Construction safety standards (CFR 29 1910 & 1926) do not even mention the term “back” (other than back-up alarms for your equipment), proper material handling, or strain injury prevention. In fact, when the ergonomic standard was passed in 2001 (and later repealed), the construction industry was not even included.
So, if you are following the letter of law per the OSHA standard, you will be neglecting one-third of all your lost-time accidents and the leading source of debilitating injuries in the workplace. This does not mean that fall protection, confined space safety, machine guarding, and other OSHA-related standards are not important. The point being that a business needs to “think beyond OSHA” when it comes to safety and address ergonomic and material handling issues, or it will pay the price, literally, in increased claim costs and insurance premiums.
It is the opinion of many experts in the safety and health community that the reason these ergonomic issues are not addressed by OSHA is that there is not a simple standard that can be written to control strains. Fall prevention and machine guarding standards are based on sound engineering studies, and specific prevention measures can be implemented to reduce worker injury risk through physical control measures. However, creating a standard for proper lifting or minimizing repetitive motion risk is not so simple.
What can you do as an organization to address this issue? The first step is to understand and communicate that the OSHA standard is a minimum guideline that is promulgated by a political entity, not safety professionals. Organizations must look beyond the standards to minimize employee risk and reduce claim costs. There are two risk management techniques that have been successful in controlling strains in the workplace.
The first is supervisor safety observations. This very successful technique, referred to as “behavior-based safety” in the safety world, is meeting with increasing success in the construction industry. Books have been written on how to implement an ergonomic behavior-based safety observation system, but the process boils down to three basic steps.
• Step 1: Educate supervisors and field staff about strain injury risks and steps that can be taken to prevent material handling-related accidents.
• Step 2: Have supervisors observe employees on the job, looking for good and bad work habits related to lifting and material handling. They can coach proper work habits and correct the bad habits to reduce the risk of injury in the future.
• Step 3: Track good and bad work habits to determine trends and identify opportunities for improvement. Some over zealous behavior-based safety experts believe that this process must be formal with documented inspections or it should not be done at all. This thought process is very short sighted; implementing all or part of this process will inevitably reduce employee risk of injury.
The second strain risk management technique is a sound accident investigation process focused on finding the root cause of the accident and finding a solution to prevent recurrence of similar incidents. Strain injuries are often the most neglected when it comes to a thorough accident cause and prevention analysis. All claims, and in particular strain-related incidents, should be examined in detail to see what really caused the accident.
For example, the focus should be on why the person was lifting incorrectly and what could have been changed to avoid the injury. Utilize the incident as an educational experience to determine the flaw in the process and learn from the mistake. Often, a simple design change or process can be implemented to eliminate the lifting hazard.
Addressing ergonomic risks in the workplace can be a difficult task. The good news is that implementing sound ergonomic principles in the workplace will not only reduce the risk of injury, but almost always improves efficiency. Many successful operations have found that looking beyond the OSHA standards, towards the organization’s total cost of risk, can pay great dividends in the long run. *
The author
Mark Gaskamp is currently a risk consultant for Wortham Insurance & Risk Management in Austin, Texas. Prior to joining Wortham, Mark served as a senior underwriter for The St. Paul Travelers organization and also worked as a risk consultant for Corporate Systems. He is a national faculty member of The National Alliance’s Certified Risk Manager’s (CRM) program. For more information on the CRM program, call (800) 633-2165 or go to www.TheNationalAlliance.com.