Mock OSHA inspections and audits are vital to a company’s safety program integrity. Trivent’s core team of safety experts can inspect and audit your facilities or jobsite from top to bottom to ensure your compliance with OSHA and many other workplace regulations. Trivent also provides insight for ways to improve your safety culture and programs involved. Here are the top 5 reasons to conduct a mock OSHA inspection/audit:
1. Maintain Compliance
The main reason to conduct an OSHA inspection or audit would be to help ensure you are compliant before an OSHA representative shows up unannounced. The anxiety of walking around with an OSHA inspector when you don’t know if there are holes in your safety measures is something you should never have to deal with as a safety manager or business owner. Conducting an inspection ahead of time can give you and your company a list of action items you need to execute to get your business compliant.
2. An Accurate Representation of Your Current Safety
A mock audit/inspection can point out deficiencies that you as a safety manager or business owner may have never been able to explore. Businesses constantly change layout, tools, equipment, and personnel. Trivent knows the things to look for, as well as those small items that may be overlooked otherwise. Trivent is able to develop an accurate representation of the status of the safety measures you have employed, suggest any improvements, and operates as if they were an OSHA representative. Having this information can help ensure your workplace remains hazard free, safe, and efficient.
3. Inspection Preparation
Simply preparing for the possibility of an OSHA audit can be a daunting task. Trivent prepares a company by mimicking the actions of an OSHA inspector. This can get you prepared for an inspection by seeing how the process works. Here are a few questions to answer ahead of time:
- What type of credentials should the inspector have?
- Who will be the one to meet with the inspector?
- Who is the backup to meet with the inspector?
- Will you ask for a warrant?
- Do you have a form to document inspection occurrences?
- Are your pertinent documents collected and easy to produce? (Training courses and records, inspection records, employee records, etc.)
Periodic audits can help ensure the process goes as smoothly as it can. It is important to keep records up to date and to record the administration of required training to make sure all of your documents stay up to date should an inspector choose to show up unexpectedly.
4. Create a Plan for Improvement
A quality mock OSHA audit can provide new ideas for improving your safety program through cutting edge policies and new information only a training consulting company could stay on top of. In the end, workplace safety is a process. Auditing the integrity of the process, creating a plan to improve that integrity, and then executing that plan will lead to an efficient and safe workplace for your employees, your product, and yourself. Workplace safety is all encompassing, and each person has their own direct and indirect responsibilities as they relate to safety. A mock audit can ensure all of those responsibilities are covered.
5. Create a Culture of Safety
It is important for your employees to feel they are part of a company that strives to provide the highest level of safety. A mock OSHA audit can send the message that you are focused on the safe success of your company. This message extends to each piece of the pie, from the upper management to the workers in the field or on the floor. The intention of Trivent’s OSHA audits is to foster this feeling of culture and safety, moving away from the specific actions and more toward a mentality of overall safety.
The reasons to conduct an OSHA audit or inspection could run off the page, but this gives you a good idea of how an audit can improve your safety processes right now. While having the strict compliance items audited and itemized is an excellent process to run, the shift in mentality and focus on safety you are professing to your employees will lead to a safer and more efficient workplace for years to come.