Workplace Health and Safety Checklists

It is a legal requirement to have a hazard identification process in your workplace and safety checklists are a great away of partially meeting that obligation particularly if you are just starting out and don’t know what to look for or you want to consistently monitor certain critical items, areas or procedures. But they must be used carefully. Here are some useful tips:

• Generic checklists are a good start and you can find a huge range of free safety checklists online but they must be modified to suit your workplace. I have seen a safety checklist in the Australian Outback that asked if “snow was regularly removed from sidewalks”.
• Don’t make them too onerous or someone will just sit in the office and fill it out.
• Some things just don’t change over a long period of time. Have a series of say daily, weekly, monthly and annual checklists. No point having “does the factory have sprinklers” on your daily checklist.
• Make use of all your resources – if you have security guards in a shopping mall then get them to fill out a checklist on their rounds.
• If you discover a new risk or hazard as the result of an incident or whatever then add it to the checklist.
• Avoid tick and flick checklists. Every question should require a short narrative so you know someone has considered it.
• Add any findings to a spread sheet so you can monitor any actions
• Add major findings to the front of the next check list you do so you can focus on it and ensure it was corrected.
• Complete a checklist just prior to the safety committee meeting and discuss the findings
• Share the load, have a different person complete it every time
• Take photographs. Keep a record of before and after images of a hazard or risk – put these on your safety notice board
• File the checklists for future reference

You can find a range of examples here - but don’t forget to modify them to suit your workplace

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