It probably comes as no surprise that winter can be a hazardous time for employees.

Between slips and falls, challenging driving conditions, extreme cold, shoveling and more, there are several additional dangers to consider as the weather turns colder. However, there are a number of steps employers can take to prevent injuries among their workers.

That’s why SFM has compiled a wealth of resources to help keep employees safe during winter. Be sure to share these resources with your safety leaders, employees and others.

Winter-proof your workplace to stop slips and falls

Follow these steps to get your employees ready for the risks of winter weather and cut down on slips and falls in the workplace.

11 common sense tips for safe winter weather driving

Follow these tips to keep safe while driving in snowy and icy winter weather.

Prepare to prevent winter slips and falls

Winter slips and falls are among the most common causes of workplace injuries. As an employer, there’s a great deal you can do to prevent these injuries at your workplace.

Four quick tips for safe snow shoveling this winter

Follow these four tips to reduce the risk of injuries while shoveling snow, so you can get back inside safely.

Easy way to avoid winter falls: Step down, not out.

Using the “Step down, not out” method when getting out of a vehicle or stepping off a curb forces you to stand up or step flat footed, eliminating the chances of slipping.

Safety video: Avoid slipping this winter

Watch this video to learn how to avoid slipping and sliding this winter.

Lastly, be sure to check out additional items related to winter safety in the SFM Resource Catalog.

Each year, thousands of employees are the victims of workplace violence.

More than 20,000 private industry workers experienced nonfatal workplace violence in 2020, according to a 2024 report from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH).

Of those, 22% required 31 or more days away from work to recover and another 22% involved 3-5 days off of work. Even more sobering, nearly 400 U.S. employees died from workplace homicide in 2020, according to NIOSH.

That’s why de-escalation in the workplace is so important. The technique is vital when confronted with violent or aggressive behavior.

According to professionals , de-escalation means “transferring your sense of calm and genuine interest in what an individual wants to tell you by using respectful, clear, limit-setting boundaries.” In short, de-escalation is the process of managing someone else’s behavior with your own.

Workplace violence can take many forms, including any act or threat of physical violence, harassment, intimidation and other threatening disruptive behavior.

Industries and de-escalation

Two industries more likely to see workplace violence are educational services and health care and social assistance.

SFM’s own claims data from 2019 through 2023 showed that those two industries accounted for about 95 percent of such incidents. In the health care field specifically, employees are five times as likely to experience workplace violence as other types of workers.

See additional SFM resources for de-escalation.

De-escalation tactics

While specific threats vary among industries, Jason Clausen, a Loss Prevention Specialist at SFM, said many de-escalation tactics apply universally.

“These tactics all require a state of calm, and operate around the cornerstone of active listening,” he said.

General de-escalation tactics that apply universally include:

• Respecting personal space
• Maintaining safe body positioning
• Giving clear, concise direction
• Setting obvious boundaries
• Conveying empathy
• Establishing positive tone of voice

Safety programs

Beyond de-escalation tactics themselves, employers can also take steps to mitigate workplace violence by crafting safety programs.

Generally, building a successful safety program involves four steps.

1. Set safety goals

Focus on safe behaviors rather than risky ones. Choose goals that relate to safety indicators — such as de-escalation training sessions.

The best behaviors to observe are those that will prevent injuries from happening. Review your injury records to look for any trends. This will give you a place to start.

2. Use positive recognition

When you’re observing workplace safety, take the time to recognize employees who follow proper protocols. This can be done verbally, or you can consider some sort of reward program.

3. Get employees involved

Encourage workers to participate, give them roles and give them the freedom to discuss safety challenges and successes with others.

4. Respond to employee concerns

If you have employees reporting safety concerns to you that go unanswered, the program will lose momentum, as well as credibility.

Create an environment in which employees feel comfortable bringing safety issues to their superiors and won’t fear reprisal for making suggestions. Also encourage leadership to demonstrate their support of your safety program.

You’ve probably heard that too much sitting is bad for your health.

According to the Mayo Clinic , sitting for long periods of time is linked with obesity and metabolic syndrome, as well as an increase in the risk of death from cardiovascular disease and cancer. Sitting for too long can also increase pain by tightening muscles and stiffening joints.

What can you do if you spend your workdays at a desk? The answer is simple — take frequent breaks and find ways to sit less.

Take steps to sit less

The good news is there are many steps you and your employees can take to break down the culture of prolonged sitting.

Here are four ideas for reducing chair time.

Get up and move

Find the time to move and stretch throughout the workday. Give yourself a time limit in your chair and make it a priority to stand up and give your body a break from sitting. Check out our Get up and Move poster for ideas of stretches you can do in a few minutes.

Make exercise part of your routine

Even smaller amounts of exercise can benefit your health and well-being. Exercise is cumulative, so three 10-minute walks spread throughout the day are as valuable as one 30-minute walk. Plus, you can always break up your day by moving around.

“I always suggest getting up and walking around briefly every so often,” said Mike Fetting, SFM Loss Prevention Specialist. “Bathroom. Water. Coffee. Printer. Neighbor. Don’t do all your ‘errands’ at once.”

Walk and talk

Before you gather around a table for that next meeting, consider combining it with a walk outside or around your workplace. If you’re working from home, maybe you can walk around your house during conference calls.

Be aware of how much time you and your coworkers spend sitting

Start a friendly challenge to see who can get the most steps in. Make it a goal to learn which activities you can perform while standing or on the move.

With a combined approach and a little creativity, you can significantly reduce the amount of time you and your employees spend in a sedentary position and get on a path toward better health.

If you’d like more ideas, see our Get Up and Move page for videos and posters with stretches you can do at your desk, and many more free resources.

Originally published April 2020; updated November 2024.

This is the final piece in our four-part series of SFM blogs recapping our June 2024 webinar, Driving Safety, An SFM webinar for policyholders .

The fundamental workers’ compensation issues associated with unsafe driving were outlined in several portions of SFM’s webinar.

But what about the legal consequences?

Tom Davern, Senior Defense Counsel at SFM’s in-house law firm, who has nearly 20 years of experience in the field, examined several legal aspects of a driving incident for employers to consider, including so-called vicarious liability, which means that that the vehicle’s legal owner is legally responsible for the alleged negligence of an allowed driver.

Highlights of Davern’s portion of the webinar also include:

• Liability of the driver and lawsuits
• No-fault laws
• Negligence and its implications
• Specific examples

You can also view the complete recording of webinar , and be sure to check out previous blogs in our series:

• Part I: Safe driving data
• Part II: The work comp claims process following a driving incident
• Part III: Managing safe driving at work

Lastly, you can find previous SFM workers’ compensation webinars on our website.

This is the third in a four-part series of SFM blogs recapping our June 2024 webinar, Driving Safety, An SFM webinar for policyholders .

Employers know that save driving is important, but how can they convey that to workers and ensure those practices are put into place?

Answering that question during SFM’s safe driving webinar was Jason Clausen, Loss Prevention Specialist.

“Managing your driving exposure has similarities to other hazards you manage in the workplace, but the consequences of a motor vehicle accident can be significant,” said Clausen, who is also a reserve deputy sheriff in Iowa. “It is common knowledge that driving is hazardous and even the safest drivers can have a bad day on the road. Knowing how to create a driving program, set expectations, provide training and uphold your safe driving expectations goes a long way in helping reduce the risks while driving.”

Clausen’s presentation touched on eight key points regarding managing safe driving for the workplace:

• Organizational commitment to safe driving
• Having written policies and procedures in place
• Selecting safe drivers
• Creating signed agreements for safe driving
• Ensuring strong processes for vehicle selection, maintenance and inspection
• Establishing a crash reporting and inspection process
• Crafting a disciplinary action system
• Providing driving training

Meanwhile, he also talked about specific scenarios, safe driving techniques, modern tools for safety and more.

Check out the complete recording of webinar , and keep an eye out for other blogs highlighting sections of the presentation.

• Part I: Safe driving data
• Part II: Work comp claims process following a driving incident 

Lastly, you can find previous SFM workers’ compensation webinars on our website.

Sometimes, it’s best to start with the basics. From a workers’ compensation perspective, that starts with avoiding common injuries.

While employers may fear a catastrophic injury at work, but helping prevent the everyday incident is just as important. Plus, cutting down on common injuries will help reduce claims and improve your bottom line.

Here are three featured resources for avoiding common injuries.

1. Lift safely (5-Minute Solution)

This resource gives you a quick reference on the four keys to lifting items in a safe manner. It also comes with three bonus tips to keep employees safe.

For more information, see our blog Safe lifting techniques for preventing injury.

2. Dude, focus! (poster)

This poster generates awareness of the hazards of using a device or being distracted while walking or working and promotes safety. See the poster in the SFM Resource Catalog.

Looking for more in-depth information on limiting workplace distractions? Check out our blog, Constant distraction can harm employees’ well-being.

3. General housekeeping (SIT)

This Supervisor Initiated Training (SIT) helps you address specific safety issues, including the importance of maintaining a tidy workspace. Download it now.

For more ways to keep your employees safe, search our resource catalog.

This is the first in a four-part series of SFM blogs recapping our June 2024 webinar, Driving Safety, An SFM webinar for policyholders .

What does the underlying data say about dangerous driving?

As part of SFM’s safe driving webinar, Abby Halland, Senior Business Intelligence Technical Analyst, broke down the workers’ compensation costs of dangerous driving, as well as public perception regarding certain unsafe activities.

Pulling information from SFM’s own database and the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, Halland discussed:

• Claims costs for motor vehicle crashes
• Litigation figures for claims involving crashes
• Cultural perceptions of risky driving behavior

See her portion of the webinar here:

Interesting findings from Halland’s presentation include:

• Claims from crashes are 2.5 times more expensive than all other claims
• Crashes are litigated 40% of the time, compared to 15% for other types of claims
• A survey by AAA found 30% of drivers used a handheld device while driving and 50% drive 15 mph or faster on the freeway

“It’s key that we review ways in which to reduce the occurrence of these claims and mitigate the severity,” Halland said.

Check out the complete recording of the webinar , and keep an eye out for other blogs highlighting sections of the presentation.

Lastly, you can find previous SFM workers’ compensation webinars on our website.

If you were to ask employees who the leader of their organization is, most of them would say it’s the CEO, executive director, superintendent or owner.

But if you asked them who the safety leader is, would the answer be the same?

Leadership buy-in regarding safety efforts is critical to maintaining a productive workplace. And it also benefits the bottom line.

Creating an organizational culture where everyone is dedicated to building and maintaining a safe work environment requires commitment to safety from the top down.

A LinkedIn article from late 2023 discusses the importance of involving company leaders at every step of the process, including:

• Safety committees
• Audits, inspections
• Training sessions

Still, it’s everyone’s job to set an example and make safety part of the foundation of your organization.

But if safety isn’t already ingrained in your organization’s culture, how do you get started? Here are four steps toward creating a safety program.

1. Set safety goals

To make your safety program effective, you need to set the right goals for your employees.

Focus on safe behaviors rather than risky ones. Choose goals that relate to safety indicators that are both meas­urable and specific to your workplace. The best behaviors to observe are those that will prevent injuries from happening. Review your injury records to look for any trends. This will give you a place to start.

For example, if you’re noticing a large number of back injuries due to lifting, you may want to create a safety goal around safe lifting practices. But rather than telling your employees that the goal is to go one month without injuries, instead focus on safe behaviors. Take 15 minutes every day to observe your employees at work and make a note of every time someone uses the proper lifting technique. Set a goal of observing 100 safe lifts in a week.

Not only can these observations encourage safe behaviors, but they can also help correct unsafe behaviors. If an employee doesn’t use proper lifting techniques, it won’t count against achieving the goal, but you can still observe what the employee is doing wrong and make corrections accordingly.

If you center your safety goals around risky behaviors or injuries, then it could cause employees to refrain from reporting workplace incidents. If you set a goal of going incident-free for a month, then if one of your workers is injured on day 28, they might wait to report the injury. No one wants to be the one to break the trend. But waiting to report an injury could lead to both further injury for the employee and decreased production for the company.

By setting positive goals, you can encourage safety without affecting injury reporting.

2. Use positive recognition

Reinforce safety culture with your employees through positive recognition.

When you’re doing your observation, take the time to recognize employees who follow proper protocols. This can be done verbally, or you can consider some sort of reward program.

Put together a safety program based on encouraging good behaviors that relate to the goals you’ve set. Perform regular checks and offer recognition when applicable, while also making note of any areas that need improvement. Have your supervisors do checks at varied times.

3. Get employees involved in safety

Once you demonstrate your commitment to safety, start getting more of your employees involved. Encourage workers at all levels to participate in the program and start talking to each other about safety.

Not only will this increase the number of eyes looking for ways to improve the safety of your workplace, but it will also increase personal awareness of dangerous behaviors and conditions.

Some options include:

• Have your employees do safety observations among themselves
• Ask them to fill out safety checklists
• Start a safety suggestion box
• Perform random knowledge checks

Try a few different tactics to see what’s most effective in getting your employees to start talking about safety.

You can also incentivize participation by offering rewards to employees who get involved in the program. Small prizes, such as $5 or $10 gift cards, are an easy way to encourage employees. You could also consider providing a free lunch or entering employees who participate into a drawing for a larger prize.

Once you get started, it will become second nature for your employees to communicate about safety.

“You know you have an effective safety culture when employees are willing to talk to each other when they’re doing something unsafe,” said SFM Director of Loss Prevention Lee Wendel.

4. Respond to employee concerns

Your employees need to see that you’re serious about creating a safe work environment. Once you have employees talking about safety, you need to make sure to be communicative and follow up on their observations.

If you have employees reporting safety concerns to you that go unanswered, the program will lose momentum, as well as credibility. Not only will this prevent you from improving safety, it could also cause things to swing in the other direction if your workers lose confidence in you.

It’s also the responsibility of senior leadership to make sure all supervisors and leaders who interact regularly with other employees are on board with a safety program. Supervisors need to allow employees time to engage with the safety program.

You’ll also have to ensure your supervisors are supporting any actions taken to correct a safety concern. If a supervisor contradicts a decision, that could bring a quick halt to your program.

Conclusion

Ultimately, when it comes to leadership in safety, your goal is to have all employees view themselves as safety leaders. But you are the person who can make that happen.

“The most common reason a safety program fails is due to a lack of leadership support,” Wendel said. “A senior leader has the power to make a safety program work or destroy it based on what they say and do.”

If you can show your commitment to safety by creating a dedicated program, listening to your employees and encouraging everyone to get involved, the entire company will follow your example.

Originally published in December 2020; updated in August 2024.

Employees are at higher risk of injuries during their first six months on the job, according to SFM claim data.

Effectively training new employees on safety can be challenging, but it’s key to protecting and retaining quality employees.

Investing in a quality new-hire safety training program pays off by helping you:

• Take care of your employees
• Control your workers’ compensation premiums
• Avoid Occupational Safety and Health Administration penalties

Planning initial safety training

Your first step is to determine what topics you’ll need to cover.

You’ll want to cover both general hazards, which are applicable to all employees, and job-specific hazards. To identify these risks, conduct general hazard assessments and job-specific assessments. A Job Hazard Analysis, also known as a Job Safety Assessment, should be conducted by someone familiar with the department, workstation and tasks to be performed.

Don’t forget to include the following topics in your new hire safety training:

• Regulatory required training
• General (non-regulatory) training
• Local policies
• Incident reporting
• Return to work
• Emergency response
• Safety committee
• Safety awareness methods
• Right to refuse work or stop job if unsafe or not trained

Appropriate safety training methods are not only necessary to meet regulatory requirements; they are the key to long-term success in reducing potential employee risk. Incorporating a variety of training methods increases employees’ learning retention.

Shadow/mentor training

New employees need to thoroughly understand how to work safely after going through initial and job-specific training. Job shadowing an experienced employee provides an opportunity to learn expectations, observe safe work practices and ask questions to safely become familiar with their new position. A mentor can shadow them to assess whether correct procedures are followed and provide education or feedback.

Refresher training

You can use a safety training matrix to coordinate ongoing, periodic training for your employees.

Start by adding required topics to the matrix. Remaining topics may vary but should include the following:

• Potential hazards
• Injury trends
• Near-miss reports
• Company safety and claims policy reviews

Safety training checklist

SFM developed a simple safety training checklist to help employers determine what to include. It covers basic topics such as:

• Company safety philosophy
• Emergency response – alarms, exits, etc.
• Return-to-work
• PPE requirements
• Compliance-related training
• Procedures that address workplace hazards
• Tools and equipment that support safety
• Behaviors and/or techniques to work safely
• Policies that relate to safety
• Reporting unsafe condition or behavior
• Safety committee members and meetings (if applicable)
• Mentorship program/buddy system

Download our safety training checklist.

Observations

New hire safety orientation programs are most effective when paired with training and periodic safety observations by an experienced mentor or supervisor. Employees should be given expectations and held accountable by their leader to meet them. Consider check-ins at various intervals to assess whether the new employee can work independently to reassure the employee that the employer truly cares about their safety and elevate safety culture within the organization.

Don’t forget leadership training

Employees look to leaders and follow their examples, so it is crucial to include safety as a part of a leader’s onboarding training. Include the following topics in your safety training for leaders:

• Commitment to safety culture
• Goal setting
• Investing in safety
• Work comp 101
• Communication styles

Additional resources

Our Safety Orientation Success Guide is available in our resource catalog. It provides a solid framework that can be used to develop training, help ensure workplace safety regardless of industry, and increase productivity over time.

You can also find a library of helpful safety training resources for a variety of industries on the safety page. Click on “Employee safety orientation” to find resources organized by industry.

“Many companies that I work with really want to keep their employees safe from day one, but simply need some guidance as to what a basic new hire orientation would look like,” said SFM Loss Prevention Specialist Toby Tortorilla. “This new resource is a great reference for businesses of any size, to either start fresh or build upon an existing program.”

Originally published in April 2023; updated in August 2024.