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Not Your Average Safety Calendar
I recently stumbled upon the Kaizen Safety Cross and found the concept to be an efficient and creative way to regulate your workplace safety program.
There’s never a bad time to talk about safety in the workplace. As our habits harden into our molds, we often overlook the little things we do everyday that could be a threat to our safety and others. However, unlike other facets of our business like quality or profit, safety is the one area we have no “do over.” When mistakes happen, it is important we work towards resolving the issue at hand and point out the mistake for others to acknowledge.– Enter the Kaizen Safety Cross.
The Kaizen Safety Cross is essentially a safety calendar in the 101 kaizen templates from gembapantarei.com. A safety calendar is one of the most important visual management tools for any organization running a lean enterprise. It’s not just for factories anymore either. Employees can get sick or hurt in any occupation, meaning a safety calendar can benefit your company and you might not even know it…yet.
The Kaizen Cross
One of the many functions of a safety calendar is that it grabs your attention. On first glance the calendar is eye catching and immediately puts safety on your mind.
You can use the calendar to catalog sick days, back injuries, near misses and really anything you wish to keep track of that you can monitor and look to improve on. Each department should have their own calendar so that when you enter each one, the cross/calendar grabs your attention.
As you begin to collect data on your calendar you can start to work towards improvement. The more near misses and lost time incidents you can eliminate, the better off, rather safer off your workplace will be.
The Heinrich Principle
When you first start to use this or any safety calendar, it is best to mark every cut, bruise, or minor injury in red. Not reporting the near misses is not helping to improve your system. The Heinrich principle states that paying attention to the “near misses” is key to preventing serious injuries or deaths in the future.
The “Heinrich Accident Triangle,” was developed by Herbert William Heinrich. Heinrich was an American industrial safety pioneer from the early 1900’s who’s principle states that if you prevent the near misses, you will prevent the more serious and fatal injuries.
In his findings he found that for every accident that causes a major injury, there are 29 accidents that cause minor injuries and 300 accidents that cause no injuries or “near misses.” He felt that because accidents share many common root causes, addressing the commonplace accidents will help eliminate major injuries or fatalities down the road.
Heinrich also believed from his findings that 85 to 95% of all workplace accidents stem from unsafe actions by individuals. Although he did encourage employers to control hazards and eliminate the threat of dangers to the employees.
Final Words
The Kaizen Safety Cross is a great safety calendar, but it’s one of hundreds out there. The idea is to get you thinking safety and ways to improve your safety culture all the time. The calendar is a perfect way to have a visual tool that is in open view for all to see as they walk by.
Nobody wants to walk into their area and see a calendar marked up in red. The safety calendar should be incorporated into the safety program and lean initiatives such as 5S, quality and cost reduction. It should be apart of a team’s performance measurements and maintained accordingly.
The goal is to keep it simple and visually appealing. It does not need to be a complicated process that takes away from other tasks and confuses employees. It should compliment, not replace the health and safety reporting system that you already have.
If you don’t have one already you are doing you safety culture and lean initiatives a disservice. The safety calendar is one of the most practical and useful tools you can have in your workplace, start using one today.
Additional Resources
- Cross-Docking (Understanding Efficient Warehouses)– creativesafetysupply.com
- Great Kaizen Idea – Kaizen by Inspiration– blog.creativesafetysupply.com
- Kaizen Continuous Improvement– blog.5stoday.com
- Getting the Most Out of Kaizen– 5snews.com
- Kaizen Events or Daily Kaizen – What to choose?– hiplogic.com
- Kaizen: Continuous Improvement for Lean Manufacturing Success– jakegoeslean.com
- The Concepts of Kaizen– creativesafetypublishing.com
- Overcoming the Challenges of Implementing Kaizen– lean-news.com
- Kaizen in the Workplace– babelplex.com