Good Practice
Accident Prevention
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Successful management to prevent accidents
- Actions at enterprise level to prevent work-related accidents
- Management to prevent accidents - Elements of success
- Risk assessment
- Accidents and gender
- Prevention of accidents to people with disabilities
- Consultation
- Information and training
- Key hazards and risks
Under European Union directives, employers have responsibilities for the safety and health of their workers. Directive 89/391 provides the general framework for health and safety management, risk identification and prevention. The Directive has been implemented in national legislation that may include additional requirements.
Employers are required to assess risks and take practical measures to protect the safety and health of their workers, keep accident records, provide information and training, consult employees and co-operate and co-ordinate measures with contractors. A hierarchy of prevention is set including:
- Avoid risks;
- Combat risks at source;
- Adapt work to the worker;
- Replace the dangerous with the non-dangerous; and,
- Give collective measures priority over individual measures.
More information in several languages is available on the Agency’s factsheet “Successful Management to Prevent Accidents” from the publications area of the Agency’s site.
Actions at enterprise level to prevent work-related accidents
Companies should ensure the safety and health of workers in every aspect related to their work. Therefore, employers should take the necessary measures for the safety and health protection of workers, including the prevention of occupational risks and the provision of information and training, and provide the necessary organisation and means.
To prevent accidents at company level, enterprises should establish a safety management system that incorporates hazard identification, risk assessment, implementation of prevention measures, monitoring and review. Risk assessment involves:
- Identifying hazards – What might go wrong?
- Judging who might be harmed and how seriously, including employees, contractors, and the general public
- Deciding how likely it is to happen
- Deciding how these risks can be eliminated or reduced – can facilities, work methods, equipment, or training be improved?
- Setting priorities for action according to the size of risk, numbers affected, etc.
- Implementing control measures
- Assessing whether control measures are working
- Including employee consultation in the process and providing information on risk assessment results
- Ensuring that occupational health and safety knowledge, skills and expertise are available
Furthermore, the company should ensure that working conditions and machinery have been adapted to technical progress. (Council Directive 89/391/EEC and 98/37/EC)
Management to prevent accidents - Elements of success
Management should drive health and safety by:
- Setting policy and health and safety objectives
- Providing adequate resources to implement the policy
- Including health and safety at all levels of management functions and decisions
- Consulting with employees
- Monitoring and reviewing to check effectiveness of policy and the whole system
A structured approach to management ensures that risks are fully assessed and that safe methods of work are introduced and followed. Periodic review checks that these measures remain appropriate. A typical management model is described below.
- Policy – Sets clear commitment, objectives, responsibilities and procedures for the organisation.
- Planning – Identifies and assesses the risks arising from work activities,
and how they can be controlled. Activities in the planning process include:
- Risk assessment and identification of prevention measures
- Identifying the management arrangements and organisation needed to exercise control
- Identifying training needs
- Ensuring that occupational health and safety knowledge, skills and expertise are available
- Implementation and operation – Involves putting plans into practice. This may mean: making changes to the organisation and working procedures, working environment, equipment and products used; training management and staff; and improving communications.
- Checking and corrective action – Performance should be monitored. This can be reactive, e.g. using accident records or proactive, e.g. by feedback from inspections and audits and from staff surveys. Accident investigations should identify the immediate and underlying causes, including management failings. The aim is to ensure that systems and procedures are working and to immediately take any corrective action needed.
- Management review and audit – Allows checking of the management system’s overall performance. External circumstances may have changed, e.g. new legislation has been introduced. There is also an opportunity to look forward, e.g. to changes in business structure, development of new products or the introduction of new technology. Review of accidents should include learning lessons at management level. Auditing examines whether the policy, organisation and systems are actually achieving the right results.
Risk assessment involves:
- Identifying hazards - what might go wrong?
- Judging who might be harmed and how seriously, including employees, contractors, the public
- Deciding how likely it is to happen
- Deciding how these risks can be eliminated or reduced – can facilities, work methods, equipment or training be improved?
- Setting priorities for action based on size of risk, numbers affected etc.
- Implementing control measures
- Reviewing, to check that control measures are working
- Including employee consultation in the process and providing information on risk assessment results.
Taking a ‘gender-neutral’ approach to risk assessment and accident prevention can result in risks to female workers being underestimated. A careful examination of real work circumstances shows that both women and men can face significant accident risks at work, so it is important to include gender issues in workplace risk assessments, for example by:
- Having a positive commitment and taking gender issues seriously;
- Looking at the real working situation;
- Involving all workers, women and men, at all stages; and
- Avoiding making prior assumptions about what the hazards are and who is at risk
- Ensuring collaboration and cooperation with the workers
Prevention of accidents to people with disabilities
People with disabilities should receive equal treatment at work and this includes equality regarding health and safety at work. Health and safety should not be used as an excuse for not employing or not continuing to employ disabled people.
Risk assessments and accident prevention measures should take account of individual workers’ differences and it is important not to assume that all workers are the same. Separate risk assessments are needed for pregnant workers, and similarly, they may also be necessary for disabled workers.
Health and safety measures, designed to protect people from harm, should not be used in a discriminatory way to exclude disabled people from the workplace or treat them less favourably. For example, claiming that a worker in a wheelchair cannot escape from a building in an emergency or that a hearing impaired worker cannot hear a fire alarm. If health and safety is given as a reason, employers need to show, by means of an adequate risk assessment and competent advice, for example from a specialist disabilities organisation, that there is a genuine problem that cannot be overcome by taking measures to accommodate the disabled person, such as transfer to another job.
Accident prevention measures for persons with disabilities may also help to reduce accidents to all workers, such as:
- Good lighting in the workplace
- Safe workplace access and egress
- Well maintained pedestrian and traffic routes in the workplace
- Clear communication of hazards and risks in the workplace (e.g. by good signing)
Consulting the workforce is a requirement. Using their knowledge helps to ensure hazards are correctly spotted and workable solutions implemented. Worker representatives have an important role. Employees must be consulted on health and safety measures and also before the introduction of new technology or products. Consultation helps to ensure that workers are committed to safety and health procedures and improvements.
Workers have a right to receive information about the risks to health and safety, preventive measures, first aid and emergency procedures. Employees have duties to co-operate actively with employers’ preventive measures, following instructions in accordance with training given and taking care of their own and workmates’ safety and health.
All workers need to understand how to work safely. Therefore training should cover: what the risks are; the protective measures to follow; and, emergency procedures. Training should be relevant and understandable, including for workers who speak a different language. Training should be provided for new workers and for existing workers when work practices or work equipment change, with change of job, or when new technology is introduced. Training requirements may vary according to worker ability. Particular care should be taken when training workers with disabilities.
Training should be focused on:
- The principles of the OSH management system, the goals to achieve, and the employee responsibilities;
- The specific hazards and risks involved in the task, the organisation, the products, the equipment, the environment to which the employees can be exposed if they do not apply the correct working procedures;
- The practical aspects and the skills needed to carry out the task;
- The procedures that should be followed to avoid any risk;
- The preventive measures to be taken before, during, and after the task;
- The specific safety and health instructions for working with technical equipment and dangerous products;
- Information on collective and individual protection;
- Where can employees get information on OSH?
- Who should be contacted to inform about emerging risks?
- Emergency procedures
All the hazards and risks that have been identified after a risk assessment should be addressed. Fatal risks and dangers should obviously be notified as a priority. The type of hazard, the degree of risk they pose, and the severity of harm that may result will vary from workplace to workplace, sector by sector. The following list highlight just some of the issues:
- Work equipment and plant
- Inadequate mechanical safeguards to prevent contact with dangerous objects.
- Lack of maintenance of work equipment and vehicles
- Cuts and splinters (from blades, corners, sheet metal, tools, edges, etc.)
- Electrical hazards
- The workplace
- Poor housekeeping (order, cleanliness, control)
- Poor visibility in areas where vehicles and lifting equipment (e.g. mobile cranes) are working
- The mixing of people and vehicles (particularly at entrances and exits to garages, warehouses, and depots)
- The workforce
- Lack of information, instruction, training, supervision, and education
- Workplace transport
- The uncontrolled movements of objects (for example of poorly secured barrels and other loads and containers in storage, transport, distribution, or handling)
- People: being struck or run over by moving vehicles (e.g. during reversing); falling from vehicles; being struck by objects falling from vehicles; or vehicles overturning
- Falls and falling objects
- Many deaths at work are due to people falling (working at height on scaffolding, ladders, staircases, mobile ramps, etc.),
- Falling objects do considerable harm
- People can also fall over because of cluttered, dirty, slippery (oily etc.) corroded passages and poor surfaces
- Thermal burns are caused by working with hot surfaces, hot liquids, vapours, or gases (exhaust, etc.), or heating systems
- Chemical burns due to corrosive substances, in particular to the strong acids and bases used in some processes (e.g. cleaning, maintenance, surface treatment, etc.).
- Fires and explosions feature among major and fatal accidents. They are caused by the conjunction of three factors – fuel, oxygen, and an ignition source.
- Certain dangerous substances are fatal when inhaled. For example, the ‘silent killer’ CO or carbon monoxide, generated by incomplete combustion (exhaust fumes)
- Some particularly dangerous work involves exposure to the risk of asphyxiation, i.e. to a lack of vital oxygen. This can be the case in confined spaces, such as vats, tanks, reactors, or tubes.
- Psychosocial factors, such as stress can considerably increase the risk of industrial accidents.
In general, most sources indicate that human factors are the cause of 80%-90%
of accidents, with only 10%-20% being caused by material factors. This proportion
can vary significantly from one sector to another, and/or from one activity
to another.
Checklist for management to prevent accidents
- Have clear procedures and responsibilities for health and safety been set and does everyone know their own and others’ responsibilities?
- Do you know what you have to do to comply with health and safety legislation? If not, have you appointed a competent person who can provide advice?
- Have you identified the main risks to health and safety and taken action to eliminate or reduce them?
- Are your arrangements for the maintenance of work equipment adequate?
- Have you provided your workers with any necessary personal protective equipment for risks that cannot be avoided by other means? Have you trained them in its use?
- Have you provided information to the workers on the risks, and trained them in safe working and emergency procedures?
- Do you consult your workers about health and safety issues, including changes to policy, work procedures, equipment?
- Do workers know how to report unsafe conditions and accidents?
- Do you take prompt action to investigate accidents, near misses and reported problems?
- Do you regularly inspect the workplace, and check that workers are following safe working procedures?
- Do you have a system for reviewing your health and safety policy and working procedures?
