Safety Inspections Are Important But Challenging

To ensure that your company adequately protects its workers and complies with the OHS laws, it’s important to do regular safety inspections to identify safety hazards before someone gets hurt and make sure that all proper safety measures are in place. But doing inspections—and following up on the results—is challenging.

For example, we recently asked about your biggest workplace safety inspection problems. You said they were:

• Getting cooperation from workers and/or supervisors (52%)
• Conducting effective inspections (22%)
• Responding to the results to the inspection, such as addressing identified hazards (22%)
• Doing them as regularly as required by OHS law (19%)
• Doing them at all (10%).

The OHS Insider has tools to help you overcome some of these inspection challenges, including:

• Information on the JHSC’s role in inspections
• Five steps for an effective inspection
• Sample workplace inspection checklists you can download and adapt
• A checklist for inspecting your workplace for IAQ problems
• A case illustrating why regular inspections are important to proving due diligence
• A fire inspection checklist.