Every day, more than 12 workers die on the job – and more than 4.1 million workers suffer a serious job-related injury or illness each year costing S198 billion dollars a year. All of these deaths are preventable with proper safety training.

Do you have an effective injury and illness prevention program to help find and fix workplace hazards before workers are hurt? Injury and Illness prevention programs, also refered to I2P2 or IIPP, will save lives and prevent injuries.

Thirty-four states already require or encourage employers to implement injury and illness prevention programs aimed at just that.

Here are some key elements of an effective I2P2 program:

• Management leadership,
• Worker participation,
• Hazard identification and assessment,
• Hazard prevention and control,
• Education and safety training,
• and program evaluation and improvement.

Including a similar set of commonsense elements that focus on finding all hazards in the workplace and developing a plan for preventing and controlling those hazards is what makes an injury and illness prevention program successful.

Participation is essential to ensuring that all hazards are identified and addressed, from management leadership across the board to the active workers.

Finally, workers need to be trained about how the program works and the program needs to be periodically evaluated to determine whether improvements need to be made.

Until next time, stay positive and stay safe.