What is a Safety Walk?
A safety walk is a proactive measure where managers, supervisors, and safety officers tour the workplace to identify potential hazards in their facility. Determining health, safety, and environmental risks helps the organization implement preventive or mitigation controls to reduce accidents and occupational illnesses. It also involves observing practices and interacting with employees to promote a safety culture.
Importance
The concept of roaming the workstation to survey the space and the workers to uphold workplace safety and ensure product or service quality isn’t new. However, the practice of management by walking around (MBWA), an idea from Hewlett-Packard in the 1970s, has been adapted into safety management systems, making risk identification and protocol reinforcement more effective. Here’s why:
- Proactive risk identification – Safety walkthroughs allow for on-the-spot identification of hazards and, more importantly, immediate implementation of corrective actions.
- Behavioral change – Aside from pointing out physical hazards, safety walks enable Environment, Health, and Safety (EHS) managers to catch unsafe behaviors, negligence, and direct violations. They can call attention to it, find out the root cause, and resolve the issue without delay.
- Employee engagement – A vital component of safety walks is direct communication between management and employees. By allowing workers to freely voice concerns, suggestions, and even criticisms of current safety practices, the organization can reinforce behavior-based safety and foster a strong safety culture where everyone truly matters.
Mitigate Health and Safety Risks
Key Aspects of a Safety Walk
Organizations, depending on the industry they belong to, the expanse of their operations, or the risks they face, will have different considerations when conducting safety walks. However, these OSHA-recommended factors should be incorporated into any safety walk process:
- Pre-inspection preparation determines the focus of the walk, ensuring that the activity has a structure. It also assembles the team, ascertaining that personnel from different levels of the organization can provide skills and perspectives.
- An on-site walk, or the actual conduct of the activity, is when the assembled team actively looks for physical hazards, examines equipment, and engages with employees while assessing their behavior and work practices.
- Documentation is the recording of all findings. Analysis and prioritization are also done immediately after.
- Action assignment focuses on implementing controls to eliminate hazards and improve safety conditions. It also involves communicating changes to the rest of the workforce and monitoring the progress and effectiveness of the measures.
How to Conduct a Safety Walk
Following a systematic approach when conducting a safety walk is vital to ensure all physical hazards and behavioral risks are identified, assessed, and addressed. Here is a simple step-by-step guide that can help EHS teams succeed:
Step 1: Plan the safety walk.
Proper planning sets the foundation for comprehensive hazard identification and effective risk assessment. This consists of three vital activities:
- Determine the area or department to be inspected, based on previous incidents, high-risk areas, or schedule. It would also help if EHS managers know what the goal of the safety walk is (e.g., compliance vs. routine hazard check) so they can allocate the right resources.
- Select a diverse team, including safety managers, supervisors of specific departments, and front liners, to gain different perspectives.
- Develop detailed checklists for the target areas, such as Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) registers, equipment inspection, or facility condition assessment. Utilizing digital templates helps standardize the process, upholding objectivity and transparency.
Create your own Workplace Safety Inspection checklist
Step 2: Conduct the walk.
Observing the workplace firsthand provides accurate and objective insights into the workplace’s safety condition. It should involve the following:
- Start with a short briefing to explain the purpose of the excursion. It also allows everyone to review the checklist. It would also be an appreciable safety moment for everyone involved.
- Document the findings, noting safety hazards, instances of non-compliance, and opportunities for improvement. Take photos and videos to provide context to the annotations.
- Interact with the frontliners to gain their viewpoints on their tasks and safety protocols. This is also the perfect time to congratulate them on their good safety performance or encourage them with a few words of advice about safety in the workplace.
Step 3: Do a debriefing session.
After the walkthrough, sit down with the team to analyze the findings. This is also the time to prioritize the issues and develop an effective plan for prevention or correction. Here are some best practices:
- Categorize the findings to make root cause analysis and prioritization easier.
- Use visual aids (e.g., photos and diagrams) to illustrate the findings.
- Utilize the risk matrix to consider the severity and frequency of the issues.
- Prioritize wisely, giving precedence to hazards that violate regulations and industry standards
- Do a cost-benefit analysis to consider the costs of implementing solutions versus the expenses of a safety incident.
- Set SMART goals for every action noted.
- Assign specific tasks and deadlines to skilled and responsible individuals.
Step 4: Implement corrective actions.
The timely implementation of corrective actions prevents accidents, injuries, and occupational illnesses. Here are some must-dos while executing these changes:
- Conduct inspections regularly to verify that corrective actions are implemented as planned.
- Maintain a detailed record of all actions, including description of the issues, root cause analysis, corrective actions taken, responsible parties, completion dates, and verification results.
- Inform all relevant personnel about the corrective actions being taken, including regular updates on progress.
Step 5: Monitor, review, and improve.
If the organization is serious about maintaining a high standard of safety by preventing the recurrence of incidents and eradicating specific hazards, constant monitoring for continuous improvement is imperative.
Aside from tracking the corrective actions, EHS personnel should regularly schedule safety walks. Even when short-term safety goals are consistently reached, complacency shouldn’t be allowed because there will always be risks emerging on the horizon.
FAQs About Safety Walks
Safety walks can be led by various individuals, including managers, department representatives, and frontliners. In large enterprises, in-house safety professionals prepare, lead, document, and monitor safety initiatives since they’re most knowledgeable about workplace hazards. However, this should involve a mix of people from different levels of the organization because gaining varying perspectives is vital.
It greatly differs among companies because the frequency of safety walks depends on several factors:
- Industry and workplace hazards
- Company size and complexity of operations
- Regulatory requirements
Companies operating in high-risk industries (e.g., mining, high-rise construction, and oil and gas) will benefit from a monthly safety walk. Near misses and outright safety incidents warrant a weekly walkthrough.
Safety walks are, in a way, a specific example of an inspection. However, many define the latter as focused on documentation and compliance, therefore conducted more formally and less frequently. As previously explained, safety walks are more informal and executed often, aimed at proactively identifying hazards in the environment and observing employee behavior.
From the term itself, safety walks focus on early risk and hazard identification, assessment, and mitigation. Gemba walk, an activity that requires teams to walk around the workplace or facility, zooms in on process improvement. A Gemba walk checklist includes other factors besides safety, such as process efficiency, outcome quality, and waste reduction, to name a few.
Eunice Arcilla Caburao
