The success of any workplace safety program relies on all types of incident reporting, and the employees knowledge of when, where, and how to submit each report. Incident reports are a well established idea that are intended to promote and improve safety on the worksite. Sometimes it can be difficult to get buy in to their benefits, so here are a few reasons to include incident reports in your environmental, health, and safety program.

Injuries are inevitable. As much as we might strive toward that coveted zero-incident goal, at some point, someone will get hurt on the job. Fortunately, there’s plenty of data available on the most prevalent work-related injuries, as well as plenty of steps you can take to prevent them. To keep your company compliant, review the following sources of injury, and make sure your policies include steps for prevention.

Winter weather is in full swing, and with it comes the hazards of the cold. From frostbite to hypothermia, a variety of cold weather factors can result in injuries and even death on the job — not to mention OSHA citations and workers’ comp claims. Is your company’s safety program capable of addressing the cold weather? Have you put strategies in place to handle ice, extreme temperatures and other risk factors? Here are a few tips you might need for protecting your workers from cold weather dangers.

Are you at your wit's end trying to keep track of incidents by hand? Manually tracking, reporting and following up on every minor injury or illness can quickly become overwhelming, even at a small business.

Fall behind, though, and you could risk OSHA scrutiny for failing to properly report and assign corrective actions for each and every incident. Just as importantly, you could miss major opportunities to improve safety and create a better work environment at your company.

As we enter the new year, we can help to provide safer working conditions by observing the biggest problems in workplace safety from the prior year.

To that end, OSHA and the Bureau of Labor Statistics release annual data on workplace illnesses, missed workdays, occupational injuries and other safety mishaps. Here are seven of the most shocking safety statistics from 2013 – as well as pointers on how you can prevent similar problems at your own company.

The biggest danger in your workplace may not be as obvious as you think. It’s not necessarily the heavy machinery, the ladders or even the hazardous chemicals. 

It’s the danger your workers pose to themselves and others when they’re sleep-deprived. 

Imagine working on the beam of a bridge only a few feet wide and more than 200 feet high. There is no harness to secure you and nothing to catch you if you fall; one slip means certain death. As you look around at your construction crew, you know statistically, some of you won’t survive to see the project’s completion. 

It sounds barbaric, but this was standard operating procedure just a few generations ago, before the construction of the Golden Gate Bridge. 

In fact, most modern-day workplace safety practices we take for granted now didn’t exist 100 or even 50 years ago.

In this increasingly complex and competitive economy, where downsizing and consolidation are commonplace, human resource managers are taking on more and more roles. Even at large companies with dedicated safety managers, human resource managers are tasked with a variety of safety-oriented tasks – training, incident tracking, claims management and more.

Change is a challenge for companies both large and small, but an ongoing resistance to new procedures, processes and systems may be a sign your organization needs some new direction.