[National Safety Month] Preventing Slips, Trips, & Falls on Your Construction Sites

Prioritize your construction site safety

With slips, trips, and falls making up nearly 65% of all lost work days per year, according to the U.S. Department of Labor, it’s no secret that your construction site needs to keep prevention for these types of accidents top of mind. The National Safety Council set out to do just that, across all industries, by focusing on these common workplace safety risks during the second week of National Safety Month 2023. Let’s dive into some of the best ways your construction team can promote construction site safety on all your job sites.

General Housekeeping Is for Everyone

While cleanup and chores may not be the first thing that comes to mind on your construction sites, it should be a top priority for your whole team. OSHA guidelines require that all walkways and passages be cleared of obstructions, in good repair, and also large enough for safe clearance. In addition to avoiding an OSHA violation fine, keeping your walkways and work areas clean and tidy can play a big part in keeping your employees safe. 

Focus on keeping your team informed on how wide a clearance each space needs for people and equipment to pass through safely. Make sure your team keeps track of all their personal items, tools, and protective gear, packing each item away safely in storage as soon as its use is completed. Picking up debris, spare tools, and even empty water bottles or other trash as you go is a great way to keep safety top of mind for your whole team while keeping the workload for safety precautions lighter throughout the entire day. 

Including general pickup guidelines and rules for keeping the work area clean as a part of your morning Toolbox Talk is highly recommended since it can serve as a helpful reminder but also opens the discussion to all employees on how they can best implement safety techniques. While your team may not love the idea of a “chore wheel” on a breakroom fridge, keeping a digital checklist for rotating safety inspections throughout the day might be just what they need to feel involved. Proper construction site safety depends on everyone chipping in to do their part, not just your safety team or project managers. 

Focus on Training and Protective Gear

Proper training for all the equipment on your construction sites has always been a priority, but it’s easy for re-training to fall through the cracks. If your team rotates around different job sites, they may be encountering equipment or machinery they aren’t using on a daily basis, and safety training may not be the first thing on their minds. Using digital tracking methods for your training can not only keep an accurate audit trail of all the training each employee has completed, but it can also serve as a helpful notification when somebody’s training may be out of date or a little rusty.

Digital construction forms, either for tracking your safety inspections or for tracking training, are a fast and easy investment to make sure your team has everything they need. Even digital checklists for personal protective equipment (PPE) can make sure everyone is taking the appropriate precautions to avoid slips, trips, and falls. Top-tier digital forms providers will also offer enhanced features, like required signatures and automatic routing of completed forms, to make sure that every employee on a site has passed their PPE inspection. And with a digital record of every training and inspection, your site and project managers will never have to worry about lost or damaged paperwork again.

Build Your Processes With Safety in Mind

Don’t let safety become a chore—aside from the housekeeping chores already discussed! If safety precautions are a part of every job and site, your team is much more likely to keep safety rules top of mind. This can be as simple as integrating Toolbox Talks into your daily meetings or shift change meetings, or even moving to digital lockout tagout forms that can keep everyone informed of the exact status of different parts of your job site. 

When safety becomes a routine part of everyone’s day, your team builds a culture around safety. This safety culture is not only key to keeping your whole team safe, but it can also help everyone feel like a bigger part of the safety solution. Open discussions about safety measures mean that every employee can feel more comfortable calling out safety risks or hazards when they see them, making the mitigation process that much faster. Oftentimes your employees will see potential slip, trip, or fall risks first, so make sure they feel comfortable speaking up about them to help keep themselves and others safe.

Construction site safety can feel overwhelming at times, but that’s because it takes effort from everyone to get it right. Build a culture that prioritizes safety on all your job sites, and make sure your team knows the risks behind cluttered walkways or a lack of training. When your entire team feels empowered to make safer choices, and knows they’ll be commended for doing so, it can dramatically reduce the risks on your job sites.

About GoFormz

GoFormz is a digital forms solution that helps bring your data into a single, actionable place. We believe that everyone should be able to fill out their forms online and deliver products and services that redefine how people and businesses collect and process information. Support your construction workers with easy-to-complete digital forms, on any device, with or without an internet connection. With our no-code Template Editor, it’s quick and easy to build your digital forms to support job site safety initiatives without the paperwork.