Posted: Feb 09 '16

Fall Protection - Before The Fall Happens

In Canada, over 40,000 workers are injured due to fall accidents every year. In Alberta alone, six people died due to a lack of fall protection in 2015. Not only to fall accidents cost employers significant money and productivity in lost-time injuries, falls cause suffering, pain, but it can also claim lives. It’s important to have the facts about why workplace falls happen and why fall protection training is imperative to preventing such accidents.

Why Do Workers Fall?

Despite a safety-conscious employer’s best efforts, workplace falls happen. Common causes of falls in the workplace include:

• Poor working conditions such as slippery floors, poor lighting, or poor housekeeping practices
• Missing guardrails or protective mechanisms
• Equipment in poor condition, not available, not used, or not used properly
• Poor work practices due to unclear job responsibilities, lack of training for workers, and workers cutting corners or rushing to meet deadlines

The best method of fall protection is to do everything possible to avoid falls from happening in the first place. Although this seems unrealistic, you must take every reasonable step to ensure workers properly use equipment or wear any required protective gear. If you don’t, workers and supervisors can be prosecuted for not complying with occupational health and safety laws.

Fall Protection: Your Responsibility as an Employer

As an employer, you muse have a fall protection program in place to reduce the risk of injuries. This fall protection program should include a company policy outlining rules for:

• Handling spills
• Using fall-prevention equipment
• Housekeeping
• Inspections
• Lighting
• Tasks or procedures involved in fall hazards
• Documenting fall-prevention efforts

Evaluate your fall prevention program periodically to ensure that policies and procedures are effective and up-to-date with industry or company standards. If they aren’t, revise or change the policy.

Falls: A Workplace inevitability?

Falls don’t have to happen at your company. Workplace falls don’t occur due to the carelessness or clumsiness of workers. Most worker falls could have been prevented with proper training and better working conditions. Carefully examine floors, corridors, catwalks, stairways, ladders, scaffolds, truck beds, loading docks, and any other working surfaces for possible slip, trip, or fall hazards. Discovering and removing these hazards is the key to preventing fall accidents in the workplace.

It is important to remember that fall protection training in Edmonton is crucial when it comes to preventing fall accidents as well as ensuring the overall safety of your workplace. Contact us for more information about fall protection training and to schedule a OSSA approved Fall Protection Training Course for your workers.