Although not mandatory by federal law, creating an IIPP is a good business practice. Moreover, OSHA recommends it even if your state does not reinforce it.
Studies show a direct correlation between a business’s performance in productivity and its performance in safety. IIPP will help you remain competitive both in the domestic and global markets.
An IIPP will help you as an employer to avoid substantial financial and operational disruption caused due to an employee’s illness, injury, or demise. Additionally, there are certain hidden costs involved when an employee gets ill or injured while at work.
Use this incident calculator to find out the exact IIPP cost depending on your business.
What Is IIPP – OSHA?
IIPP is an acronym for the Injury and Illness Prevention Program (also known as I2P2). It is a universal intervention program that helps reduce the severity and instances of workplace injuries while alleviating the associated financial burdens faced by U.S. employers.
Do Injury and Illness Prevention Programs Work?
Creating an IIPP is about using common sense to find injury hazards in your workplace and developing a program to control or prevent those hazards. Active participation from the workforce and management leadership is essential to design an effective injury and illness prevention program.
Moreover, you need to train your employees about how the program works and the need for further evaluation for improvement. Not only does it improve the health and safety environment of your business, but it also reduces injury and illness-related costs.
However, the requirements and effectiveness of an IIPP vary from business to business as one size does not fit all.
Benefits of Injury Prevention
Some of the most common benefits of an efficient workplace injury prevention program include:
- Healthy and safe working conditions
- Better morale
- Reduced injuries and illness associated costs
- Increased productivity
- Reduced rates for workers’ compensation insurance. (the lower the number of claims the better)
Does Texas Require an IIPP Safety Program?
OSHA examined the IIPP in eight states, whether each state needed a workplace injury prevention program or offered incentives via workers’ compensation program. Texas offered the latter from 2001 till 2005, identifying the most dangerous working environments.
OSHA obligated all the identified employers to design and implement an IIPP to reduce the incidents related to work-related injuries. So yes – if you are an employer in Texas, you require an IIPP safety program.
6 Basic Elements of an Accident Prevention Program
Here are six fundamental components of an accident prevention program that every employer must follow. These will help you define ways to prevent accidents in the workplace.
1. Management Leadership
The first step is to identify who will oversee safety plans and establish their roles and responsibilities. The assigned person must have knowledge about the health and safety issues and prevention protocols at your workplace, and you must identify that person in your written IIPP policy. Many organizations refer to this person as a collateral duty safety officer (CDSO).
Additionally, you must authorize the assigned personnel to make necessary corrections to implement an efficient IIPP.
2. Worker Participation
It is important for you as an employer to establish a safety incentive program and ensure that your employees follow the rules. You must educate your employees about the requirements of an injury illness prevention plan, related safety protocols, and how to report an incident.
3. Hazard Identification and Assessment
You must establish a procedure to assess your workplace regularly and identify potential health and safety hazards. For this purpose, you need to schedule periodic inspections at the time of defining your IIPP.
These inspections will allow you to evaluate workplace equipment, conditions, and procedures that can pose a potential hazard to your employees. You can always seek assistance from safety risk management consultants for this purpose.
Chances are, if you are not proactive about finding and fixing hazards at your worksite, and OSHA inspection will uncover them. Don’t let it come to that.
4. Hazard Prevention and Control
Once you have identified the hazards, you must plan a rectification process based on its severity. All relevant personnel must be knowledgeable about the procedures and methods to correct unhealthy and unsafe working conditions.
You must define a hierarchy of hazard control to define the step-by-step guide on how to approach a hazard correction or prevention.
5. Safety Training
Establish safety training services to educate your employees on how to perform their job duties in safe ways to prevent accidents in the workplace.
An efficient IIPP includes training both your supervisors as well as the employees. You may use a train the trainer approach to achieve the desired result at larger organizations. Make sure to cover all topics and provide additional health and safety training for any non-routine tasks to ensure work injury prevention.
6. Program Evaluation and Improvement
Maintain a record of your IIPP evaluations and document how each element of the program was carried out. Go through your IIPP checklist to ensure you followed all required protocols.
A thorough record keeping will help you learn from your experience, identify incident patterns, evaluate your program, and identify areas for improvement.
Contact Safety by Design for Comprehensive Workplace Injury Prevention Guidance
If you are a business in Texas either thinking about or struggling with designing an Injury and Illness Prevention Program, it is best to seek professional help from Safety by Design. We are one of the leading safety consulting companies in Houston with years of experience in designing and implementing a comprehensive workplace IIPP safety program.
Contact Safety by Design today and discuss an accident prevention program that suits your business.
