Companies with good safety programs that are in the realm of being OSHA-compliant, it’s time to turn on a powerful burner for improvement -Kaizen. Kaizen is striving to have everyone make small continual improvements in their jobs every day or week.
To encourage Kaizen, some companies create a simple form (think simplified A3) for employees. The form asks for the following:

Describe a safety hazard
Estimate severity of injury that could occur, and likelihood of an injury
Describe possible causes and contributing factors to the hazard situation
Possible solutions to make the situation safer

Supervisors may be asked to solicit a proposal from a worker each week. If the proposal is deemed reasonable/doable, the project will receive approval and a budget. Often the employee will be asked to be involved in implementation.  The project originators are normally recognized in a newsletter or bulletin board Atta-Boy and may even be rewarded with a small gift card.

If your company does not currently have a comprehensive safety program that keeps your site mostly OSHA-compliant… You need to get with a trained safety professional (an employee or 3rd party consultant) to plan and implement the basics. It typically takes around a year of consistent work to get appropriate programs in place, and another year to get employee culture moving towards full buy -in.

Fun fact: The 5S program was originally founded solely as a safety improvement process, then after many implementations, it became obvious there were additional operational benefits too.

Impact Safety helps manufacturing companies build and improve safety effectiveness.
contact: [email protected]