What is a Safeguard?
Safeguards are vital for businesses to safely control the work environment for risk reduction and failure prevention. Rather than being reactive and reflective of failures in safety, safeguards are conscious plans in place which identify these potential risks and hazards and implement the controls necessary to prevent the negative instance from occurring in the future.
A safeguard is to protect something, someone, or some entity from harm or damage.
Types of Safeguards
While safeguards are initially constructed to address possible safety abnormalities in the workplace and implement corrective actions – ultimately to reduce the possibility of the event occurring, this is not always possible. Theoretically, a strong safeguard system should have safeguards in different stages of safety instances.
Safeguards can be thought of as protection layers that entrap an incident and eliminate its growth and continuation.
Preventive Safeguards
Preventive safeguards prioritize the elimination of an incident in safety from reaching a critical point. Considered the first line of defense after the initiating event has commenced, preventive safeguards are a barrier from the initiating event becoming a loss event.
There should not be a single preventive safeguard for a particular incident but rather an accumulation of additional resources and safeguards. While theoretically, only one preventive safeguard is necessary to stop an initiating event from becoming severe, safeguard operating systems have the potential to fail which is why preventive safeguard backups are essential.
Examples of Preventive Safeguards
- Alarm system
- Alarm response process
- Maintenance and inspections
- Emergency shutoffs
- Safety procedures and training
- Personal protective equipment (PPE)
- Safety trip controls
- Restraint devices
- Barrier or perimeter fencing
Mitigative Safeguards
Mitigative safeguards are designed to reduce the impact and severity of a loss event that surpassed the preventive safeguard barriers. Where preventive safeguards are aimed at preventing an initiating event from becoming critical, a mitigative safeguard seeks to mitigate a safety hazard’s consequences. These safeguards are the final protection layer of emergency response before a safety hazard event broadens in scope and the consequences become critical.
Examples of Mitigative Safeguards
- Sprinkler systems
- Equipment layout and spacing
- Emergency power switches
- Muster points
- Emergency exit signage
- Fire extinguishers
- First aid stations
- Two-hand controls
- Brake press
Tips for Implementing Safeguards
Review Safety Procedures/Training
Conducting a review of safety procedure documents, safety manuals, checklists, and safety training procedures verifies the current safeguards in place. Additionally, it opens an opportunity for exploration and discovery of possible modifications or updates necessary to ensure control measures are in place if an incident were to occur.
Appoint a Safeguard Lead and Team
Assigning an individual or a team responsible for analyzing, maintaining, and improving safeguard risk management allows for a more in-depth analysis of the business’s current and future safeguard management system.
Members of a safeguard management team should include a variety of employees from different areas within a business from top management to HR, to supervisors and floor staff.
Review Previous Instance Reports
A review of first aid logs and incidence reports can provide vital additional information on preventive and mitigative safeguards. Doing so creates a better optimization of internal controls, training, equipment, or processes that require improvements to reduce future harm or risk from occurring.
Communicate
Developing safeguards is a collective workplace development and requires input from senior management, to general staff. Input should be taken from the employees involved in the job task that poses a risk or will have involvement with the safeguard. Ultimately, a more thorough analysis of areas of safeguard improvements is achieved when all parties involved are communicated with.
30+ Audit and inspection checklists free for download.
What are the Benefits of Safeguards?
When a business consciously strategizes implementing adequate safeguards into its safety policy, it better prepares a business for future safety hazards. In addition to general safety benefits, other benefits of safeguards include:
Amplifies safety goals
Maintenance and improvements of workplace safeguards magnify the focus of an organization’s safety goals, and objectives. As previously mentioned, safeguards are an excellent preventative and mitigative tool but also strive for continuous improvements.
Improves culture
Increasing workplace engagement of reflection regarding current safeguards in place and idea generation of new safeguards significantly builds towards a stronger and more collective safety culture within an organization.
Reduces costs
When safeguarding is prioritized, businesses can expect fewer workplace accidents and the costs associated with time off of work due to injuries or illness and workers’ compensation premiums.
Improves compliance with regulatory bodies
Review, maintenance, and innovation of safeguards support regulations set forth by bodies such as OSHA. Furthermore, following the concept of safeguarding better prepares businesses for regulatory audits.
Increases workplace efficiency and quality
When employees are working safely and with confidence in the safeguards established, they can maintain a focus on producing quality products at an efficient level.
Certainty Software and Chevron
Certainty Software is extremely proud to support Chevron and their conscious decision to adjust their goal for an absence of incidents, but rather the presence of safeguards. Rather than analyzing factors that contributed to workplace incidents, Chevron chooses to observe the safeguards that were – or were not in place which would reduce the possibility of the same instance from ever occurring. At their Tengiz Chevron Oil Facility in Kazakhstan with approximately 60,000 employees and contractors working on the project, safeguard management was a challenge. However, with the help of Certainty Software’s checklists, reports, and ease of assigning thousands of multiple users, Chevron’s efforts to prioritize safeguard management were streamlined.
Integrating with Certainty Software created a solution of compiling substantial amounts of data in a simpler fashion. With data being centralized and easy to organize, Chevron was able to easily analyze results from Certainty’s library of checklists and identify if adequate safeguards are in place and if so, that they are working properly.
