Cold, snowy and icy weather are coming soon. As the weather brings colder and more slippery conditions, it’s a good time to remind your employees to walk carefully when outdoors.

Our new video for employees aims to catch their attention and remind them of the dangers they face when walking through parking lots in winter weather.

Parking lot slips and falls are a common source of work-related injuries during the winter months, and exercising caution can help your employees avoid nasty accidents.

We offer many resources on our winter slips and falls page you can use to prevent these types of injuries among your employees.

While forklifts play a useful and necessary role in many work environments, they can also be dangerous when not operated with care. According to the Occupational Safety & Health Administration, forklift-related accidents account for approximately 85 deaths and 96,700 injuries every year.

Tips for forklift drivers

Forklift-related injuries most often result from inattention, distraction, excessive speed, poor driving habits and lack of training.

Tips to reduce accidents and injuries for forklift drivers include:

• Wearing a seatbelt
• Making sure loads are stable and kept as low as possible
• Keeping the path in sight
• Watching for obstructions, including those overhead
• Avoiding speeding, especially when crossing a blind spot

Tips for pedestrians walking around forklifts

Pedestrians should also exercise caution around forklifts.

Some suggested safe practices are:

• Avoiding walking next to forklifts
• Alerting the driver and making eye contact when nearby
• Staying clear of raised loads

Loss prevention team trains on forklift safety

On June 1, SFM’s Loss Prevention team attended an in-house forklift training session at the Barrier Free Access facility in New Brighton, Minnesota. The event helped serve as a reminder about how dangerous forklifts can be, said Senior Loss Prevention Representative Jeff Aafedt.

Aafedt helped lead the training session, along with Loss Prevention Specialist Julie Thatcher, covering topics such as forklift inspections, safe operation, training requirements and pedestrian safety. As part of the training, members of the Loss Prevention team had a chance to operate a forklift.

“Equipment-specific training in the environment where equipment will be operated, pre-shift inspections and solid safety procedures are vital to preventing workplace injury exposures,” Thatcher said.

Following the training, SFM created a new Supervisor Initiated Training resource on forklift safety for pedestrians. Find this and other forklift safety resources in the resource catalog.

People go to the hospital to be cared for and get better. But for health care professionals, going to work can put them in harm’s way.

Nursing homes and hospitals are among the most high-risk occupations for injuries generally , and their rate of injuries from workplace violence are much greater than the average — 5 to 12 times higher, according to a recent Washington Post article .

According to OSHA , “health care accounts for nearly as many serious violent injuries as all other industries combined.”

Defining workplace violence

Workplace violence encompasses more than physical assaults. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health’s definition includes threats of assault as well as verbal abuse, hostility and harassment.

This violence can be committed by co-workers, patients or family members of patients. Health care workers interact with a large number of people throughout their day, often in stressful situations.

Quantifying violent incidents in the health care sector

The most recent statistics from OSHA and the Bureau of Labor Statistics paint a picture of shocking risks to workers:

• In 2015, more than 11,000 violent incidents against employees in the health care and social assistance sector occurred
• Assaults made up 10 percent of all lost-time work injuries in health care
• Of the 24 work-related fatalities in hospitals, five were a result of “violence and other injuries by persons or animals”
• The same category of “violence and other injuries by persons or animals” accounted for 11 percent of lost-time injuries in private hospitals and a staggering 45 percent of injuries in state-run hospitals (possibly because these facilities are predominantly psychiatric and substance abuse hospitals)

Within health care, some positions are more exposed to the risk of violence. Employees who work with patients with dementia or psychiatric issues, for example, may be at greater risk. Registered nurses and nursing assistants have higher lost-time injury rates due to violence than private industry on average.

Under-reporting workplace violence

According to OSHA’s “Workplace violence in health care: Understanding the challenge” report , violent incidents in health care often go unreported, with verbal abuse and bullying less likely to be reported than physical altercations.

A 2004 study of Minnesota nurses in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine “found that only 69 percent of physical assaults and 71 percent of non-physical assaults were reported to a manager.” The same study concluded that workplace violence — or the threat of violence — can hurt workplace morale and productivity and lead to higher burnout and turnover.

Preventing violent injuries in health care

With such a high rate of injuries in health care, OSHA updated its “Guidelines for Preventing Workplace Violence for Healthcare and Social Service workers” in 2015. The voluntary recommendations are designed for health care workers at all levels, from support staff to physicians, and in settings across the continuum of care, from home health care to hospitals.

The guidelines recommend incorporating a workplace violence prevention program into an organization’s broader safety and health program. An effective workplace violence prevention program addresses five components:

1. Management commitment and employee participation
2. Worksite analysis
3. Hazard prevention and control
4. Safety and health training
5. Recordkeeping and program evaluation

OSHA’s resources include a workplace violence program assessment checklist, which covers topics such as staffing, training, facility design, security measures and workplace procedures, as well as considerations for workers who do field work. Training may include de-escalation and self-defense techniques.

With health care workers facing a real threat of workplace violence, organizations should take steps to track incidents accurately, train employees on de-escalation techniques and implement a workplace violence prevention program.

Additional resources

• SFM fact sheet: Occupational injuries in health care
• SFM De-escalation Team Training – health care
• Combative patient behaviors Supervisor Initiated Training
• OSHA: Workplace violence in healthcare: Understanding the challenge
• OSHA: Preventing workplace violence in healthcare
• American Nurses Association bullying and workplace prevention page

By Lee Wendel, CIA, CSP, CSPHA
SFM Director of Loss Prevention

Nationally about 350 fatalities occur each year among workers covered by Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s walking-working surfaces and fall protection standards.

Earlier this year OSHA updated the standards. Minnesota OSHA announced that it would mirror and implement these standards effective September 19, 2017.

The updated rule applies to a wide range of businesses considered general industry. It doesn’t change expectations for those in the construction or agriculture segments.

Three categories covered by this standard are leading sources of severe injuries for SFM policyholders:

1. Walking-working surfaces
2. Ladder safety requirements
3. Fall protection systems

Walking-working surfaces

OSHA defines walking-working surfaces as “any horizontal or vertical surface on or through which an employee walks, works or gains access to a work area or workplace location.”

According to the standard, employers must ensure:

• Surface conditions are clean, orderly and sanitary
• Floors are maintained free of sharp or protruding objects, loose boards, corrosion, leaks, spills, snow and ice
• Employers must inspect, maintain and repair walking-working surfaces as often as necessary
• Hazardous conditions on walking-working surfaces must be corrected or repaired. If corrections or repairs cannot be made immediately, the hazard must be guarded to prevent employees from using the surface until repairs are completed

Ladder safety requirements

According to OSHA, falls from ladders account for 20 percent of all fatal and lost-time work injuries in general industry. In recent years, some of the most severe injuries and fatalities from our policyholders could also have been prevented using the standards’ requirements as defined in the update.

Key elements for portable ladders

• Ladders must be inspected before initial use in each work shift to identify defects that could cause injury
• Employers must ensure that steps and rungs are slip-resistant
• Portable ladders are not moved, shifted or extended while under use
• Top steps and caps are not used as steps (ladders are labeled accordingly)
• Fastening multiple ladders together is not allowed
• Ladders cannot be placed on top of other items such as boxes or barrels to gain added height

The update also covers additional requirements and future standards for fixed ladders, mobile stands and platforms.

Fall protection options

OSHA defines fall protection as “any equipment, device, or system that prevents a worker from falling from an elevation or mitigates the effect of such a fall.”

The update requires all employers to protect employees from fall hazards along edges that are at least 4 feet above a lower level. Fall protection is also required in specific situations such as hoist areas, runways, areas above dangerous equipment, wall openings, repair pits, stairways, scaffolds and slaughtering platforms.

Fall protection anchoring and design is a complex topic — if your company doesn’t have a trained “competent person,” engage an expert to help.

Fall protection options under the new rule

• Guardrail System – A barrier erected along an exposed side, edge or another area of a walking-working surface to prevent workers from falling to a lower level
• Safety Net System – A netting system to stop falling workers before they make contact with a lower level or obstruction
• Personal Fall Arrest System – Consists of a body harness, anchor, connector and may include a lanyard, deceleration device, lifeline or a combination meant to stop a fall before the worker contacts a lower level
• Positioning System – Equipment and connectors that when used with a body belt or harness allows a worker to be supported on an elevated vertical surface and work with both hands free
• Travel Restraint System – Combination of anchor, connector, lanyard or other means of connection to eliminate the possibility of a worker going over the unprotected edge or side of a surface
• Ladder Safety System – A system attached to a ladder designed to eliminate or reduce the possibility of a worker falling; Cages and wells are not considered ladder safety systems

Training requirements for these topics were also updated. A qualified person must train workers affected by these risks on how to correctly: Identify and minimize fall hazards; use personal fall protection (if used); and maintain, inspect and store equipment or systems used for fall protection.

More topics covered in the standard can be found on the OSHA website . See the OSHA site for details with general requirements starting at §1910.22.

Additional resources

• OSHA walking-working surface final rule
• NIOSH ladder app
• SFM blog: Ladder safety resources

This is not intended to serve as legal advice for individual fact-specific legal cases or as a legal basis for your employment practices.