Unsafe Act
An unsafe act is any human behavior or error that has potential or increases probability or the likelihood of an incident, accident or injury. Its one of the biggest factor for the workplace incident and accident.
Here are several example of unsafe act.
- Workers are not wearing their personal protective equipment while working.
- Taking shortcuts and horseplay during working.
- Lack of knowledge and experience and then using tools and equipment.
- Bypassing lockout and tagout procedure.
- Consuming tobacco or any influence of drugs.
- Unnecessary using of defective and faulty tools and equipment
- Ignoring of manual handling technique
- Altering and modification of equipment with any authorization
- Not using right tools for the right job
- Keeping foods with chemicals or contaminated places.
- Failure to report workplace health and safety issues.
- Carrying tools and equipment in their pockets.
- Regular ignoring of safety training's and meetings .
- Ignoring of safety signage
- Working on the top of the ladder.
- Pulling live cable from far away.
- Not using hand rails while using staircase
Unsafe Condition
its a condition that exist or inadequate physical condition of the workplace that has potential to harm property, equipment and people.
Here are numerous examples of unsafe condition
- Inadequate ventilation system.
- Insufficient or poor lighting arrangements.
- Poor housekeeping
- Wet or slippery floors
- Open rotating equipment and shaft.
- No barricading or restriction available for the hazardous area.
- There is no proper schedule for the plan preventive maintenance.
- Loose wire connections.
- Obstructed emergency pathway
- Improperly stacking of material.
- Grounding and tripping system is not available for the electrical equipment.
- Accumulation excessive waste
- stagged water, water clogging
- Electrical outlets next to the source of water.
How to prevent unsafe act and unsafe condition?
These are the most effective strategies to control and prevent of unsafe act occurrence.
- The top management and senior managers should lead by example and demonstrate health and safety practices
- Encourage employees to report unsafe act, unsafe condition and near miss through reward and incentive.
- Managers should evaluate the regular performance and trend analysis of their regular observation to identify the most areas of observation.
- Arrange regular awareness and safety trainings for the employees.
- Conduct regular inspection and monitoring to enhance the best and safe practices.
- Effective communication plays a crucial role to managing and controlling of unsafe practices.
- Adequate consultation and feedback collection for the improvement and corrective action.
- Supervisor and lead ensure that all workers are sufficient trainings
These are common practices to control and reduces the unsafe condition as much as possible.
- Management should develop the plan preventive maintenance and reactive maintenance schedule to reduce the maximum probability of malfunctioning or equipment failure.
- Effective hazards identification and risk assessment is vital to evaluate the workplace to control unsafe condition proactively.
- Develop best practices and accordingly conduct mock drills.
- If require change the layout, equipment, process etc.
- Implement physical barriers between hazardous process and equipment.
- Managers must conduct deep investigation for the workplace issues to identify the root cause and contribution cause.
- Implementing Key Performance Indication (KPI) for the performance measurement and trend analysis.
