Office Worker Safety: Don’t Fall Short on Your Health and Safety Plan!

health and safety planTo the over 40 million North Americans working in cubicles, spilling their Starbucks probably seems the worst catastrophe that could befall them. After all, just how dangerous can it be to sit at a desk in an air-conditioned office where turning on the computer is the most complicated, mechanical action required on an average day?

Pretty dangerous it turns out. There are over 76,000 workplace injuries in office environments each year according the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Falls cause most of these accidents. The National Safety Council reports that more than twice the number of workers in offices will suffer a fall considered disabling than workers in other environments, including outdoors and in areas like warehouses.

What Causes Falls?

Clutter is the biggest culprit. Workers slip on papers on the floor and trip over boxes of files in walkways.  A tangle of electrical cords to feed the modern office’s glut of gadgetry makes any pathway an obstacle course.50 things you must know about safety leadership

If you’re trying to reach a ream of paper on the shelf above your computer, don’t stand on a chair with casters. Sounds pretty obvious, right? Apparently not. After standing on chairs that aren’t steady, workers regularly fall off them.

Cubicle walls are portable. Since they can be moved, the interior landscape can change from day to day. The result is one worker colliding with another because sight lines have been blocked.

Too much of a good thing? If the floors have just been waxed by cleaning staff, they can be unusually slippery, causing falls among unsuspecting office staff. Tile and marble are especially dangerous when wet. Frayed rugs can trip people walking on them.

Fix the Problem by Reinforcing Your Health and Safety Plan

Most falls can be avoided with a little foresight on the part of management and common sense on the part of workers. Implementing an effective health and safety plan can remove hazards that routinely lead to injury.

The National Safety Council recommends several easy-to-implement precautions that will aid in your health and safety plan:

Make a clutter-free environment the office norm. Using the expertise of your safety officer, training should be written down and enforced in cubicles, offices, walkways and common areas. Insist that files, paper, boxes and typical office detritus find a home. Keep stuff off the floor.

Never stretch a cord across a walkway. Move machinery close to outlets or install new outlets. Or use a plastic guard to shield the cords. Sometimes called a surface cable raceway, it covers wires and cables that snake across office walkways.

Keep step stools and small step ladders readily available to workers. Educate them about the chance for injury falling from an unsteady platform, like the rolling chair commonly used by computer workers. Have them check that the ground beneath is always level and firm before stepping on the stool or ladder.

Install convex mirrors at blind corners in the office and on cubicle walls. Like the National Safety Council says, if it works at car and truck intersections, it will help at people crossroads. Install good lighting to avoid dimly lit spots.

fctc-online-bannerMark wet or slippery floors clearly. Install rugs or runners over surfaces like marble or tile, especially at entrance areas. Check and replace worn rugs on a regular basis.

Since most falls can be prevented, educating workers on your health and safety plan is the first step to reducing accidents. Make sure every new employee goes through your company’s health and safety course so she knows what is expected. Update workers on changes to the safety management plan in the monthly newsletter and with emails.

The more information they get, the more sensible will be the choices that members of the cubicle culture make. With a few precautions, you can prevent falls and injury in your office.

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About the Author

SBI
safetyBUILT-IN is the safety-leadership learning and development division of SCInc. We believe sustainable safety performance is best achieved through a core-values based safety culture, and that culture must be driven by leadership. Our safety-leadership programs are competency-based, and focused on performance outcomes. We believe in building capability and ownership into our client organizations—as well as sustainability into our programs—so that our clients can continue running those programs long after we’re out of the picture. Our emphasis is on building better leadership presence, better leadership communication and better leadership coaching by first building relationships of trust with people and learning how to engage them on the level of their core values and beliefs.