This episode is brought to you by Century Insurance. Century Insurance is an A-plus rated mutual insurance company specializing in providing all lines of insurance protection for artists and and trade contractors through a very limited number of select agency partners like Rancho Mesa Insurance. Hi, this is Alyssa Burley with Rancho Mesa's Media Communications and Client Services Department. Thank you for listening to today's top Rancho Mesa news brought to you by our Safety and Risk Management Network Studio One.
Welcome back everyone. Today my guest is Lauren Stumpke, Media Communications and Client Services Coordinator with Rancho Mesa. Today we're going to talk about behavior based safety programs and how they can be implemented using the Risk Management Center. Lauren, welcome to the show.
Thanks for having me. It's great to be back. For listeners who aren't familiar with behavior based safety programs, will you give a brief overview of what they are and why they're important? So behavior based safety programs utilize what's called a job hazard analysis or JHA to identify existing or potential hazards and employee main counter while performing their job.
It's important to conduct JHA's for each job to help establish and properly document safety procedures, train employees in safe and effective work practices, determine the best way to perform a job and establish ways to reduce or eliminate any identified hazards. And that's really the point of behavior based safety programs, to reduce or eliminate hazards to the employee. Agreed, and the JHA's are what safety managers use to find hazards before they hurt an employee. Are employers required to have JHA's or are they optional?
Well, in order to be in compliance with OSHA standards, a JHA is required in any work environment where personal protective equipment or PPE is required. They are also required in all situations where there is a reasonable chance that an employee could be injured while performing their job. So even if there isn't an OSHA standard specific to the work being done that requires a JHA, you'll still need to create one if there is any chance an injury could occur. That's good to know, even if OSHA hasn't specifically identified a situation and created a standard for it, it's still ultimately the employer's responsibility to ensure the employee is safe and identify any potential hazards.
So for our listeners who are new to behavior based safety programs, how would they go about creating a JHA? Well, for major clients, they can use the VDS track in the Risk Management Center to develop and manage their JHA's. The job hazard analysis wizard helps users easily create a JHA from scratch, where they can start from a sample JHA found in the library that comes preloaded in the system. All are fully customizable.
So whether your employee is operating a forklift on a construction site or is a home healthcare professional exposed to bloodborne pathogens, the library is a great place to start when building your custom JHA's. Okay, so once the user finds a sample JHA in the library, what should they do next? So the safety manager will review the sample JHA and begin to make any adjustments so that it fits their specific situation. Using the forklift operation as an example, the sample JHA identifies the safety issues like tipping the truck, hitting pedestrians or obstacles and falling product.
Then the JHA lists out the job requirements associated with the issue. They may include things like mandatory certification before use, annual training or recertification. You may see requirements like do not drive sideways on inclines, keep loads uphill, and handle only stable loads. Each issue is identified and requirements are listed to ensure a safe workplace.
Okay, now that the safety manager has identified all the issues and requirements in the JHA, what happens next? Well, in the Risk Management Center, the JHA's can be used to create training materials. It doesn't do any good to identify job hazards if employees are not trained on how to avoid them. Once the JHA is complete, the safety manager can download the JHA as a PDF or in a PowerPoint presentation format so it can be used to train employees.
The JHA's can also be repurposed in the Risk Management Center Safety Observation Track, which allows the safety manager to document the observations of employees performing their jobs. But we'll get into that a little more in another episode. Lauren, thank you for explaining JHA's, why they are important and how to create and manage them in the Risk Management Center. And thank you for joining me in Studio One.
Thanks for having me. This is Alyssa Burley with Brancia Mesa. Thanks for tuning in to our latest episode produced by Studio2D1. For more information, visit us at rangeam Mesa.com and subscribe to our weekly newsletter.