Safety Management Systems Save Lives
Safety Management Systems Save Lives
According to the International Labour Organization (ILO), 2.78 million fatal and 374 million non-fatal work-related injuries and illnesses are reported each year.
Many of these cases could be avoided with an efficient Safety Management System (SMS), which systematically approaches safety management issues for individual organizations. Below, we address the SMS and its benefits for your organization.
Occupational hazards and their resulting extended medical leaves and cost take up about 3.94% of the annual Gross Domestic Product (GDP), which is why ILO provides an app series to improve occupational safety and health.
Organisations can utilise this app to help employees with stress prevention. In ergonomic solutions across common workplace settings and in rural or agricultural settings.
SMS Basic Framework
SMS includes four basic components – Safety policy and objectives, safety risk management, safety assurance, and safety promotion.
An organisation’s staff will be trained and educated. On hazard identification, safety communication, risk assessment and mitigation among others safety issues.
Depending on how big your organisation is, an SMS can be extensive or just an occasional simple scheduled safety check.
SMS & Your Employees
With SMS in place, your employees can be sure that they are safe at work.
Regular auditing ensures that there are always safety checks and improvements, and your employees are consistently updated, upskilled and protected with the latest safety information.
Knowing what they are doing, your employees will be happy or at least safe in the knowledge that they are in a safe and regulated environment.
A safe workplace has a lower staff turnover rate than its unsafe counterpart, giving your organization a good head start.
SMS & Your Finances
When you check your existing safety measures and continuously improve them as signs of new problems arise. You are fixing potential issues before they become more serious and start costing you big bucks to fix.
Problems are much cheaper to fix when they are small. When it comes to safety-related issues. Getting a new tool or alarm system would undoubtedly be a lot more affordable than to hire new employees.
SMS & Your Business Growth
So, you have happy employees, and you are pinpointing potential safety red flags and area of improvements from your SMS auditing. These efforts go a long way in business growth once your company starts taking actions relevant to the audit results.
As more safety areas get addressed and fixed, your company gains more trust and credibility from your employees. You won’t need to worry much about the hiring process as your company grows to need more staff either since your organization already has everything in control.
Improving Your SMS
Aside from scheduling regular safety audits. You can improve the overall efficiency of your SMS by conducting training and regular reviews.
You can always rely on external workshops and meet up with external safety audit service providers. To ensure that your staff is well-versed in these safety issues at work.
However, this process can also be done internally via promotional posters, company newsletters and many more.
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