• Designate one or two point persons for the safety and health management system.

A safety and health management system cannot be implemented in a day. It takes time and hard work. But the good thing is, it doesn’t need to be done overnight. And all the little steps taken will give immediate results. To start a program, it’s usually a good idea to designate one or two point persons. This will usually be the safety and health manager or perhaps the safety committee. Everyone needs to be involved in the process, but typically a point person is needed to coordinate and drive the program.

When it is start time, survey employees as a first step. Find out where they think the safety effort is currently, what they’d like to see, how they’d like to be involved, and so on. Also, create a schedule. Don’t try to do all of this at once. Take it a piece at a time and set a date for completion of the tasks. And recognize those milestones along the way. Boast about the improvements made and tangible results or cost savings. Also, keep the program adaptable to future changes. For example, the company may start with a safety and health program, but perhaps later the company wants to go for an environmental/ International Organization for Standardization (ISO) system — the groundwork will already be present. Similarly, if the company already has a quality or environmental system in place, then they can piggy-back off that to start their safety program; many of the elements may be in place.