The American Society of Safety Professionals (ASSP) has highlighted the need for clearer and more practical safety standards following research into serious injury and fatality prevention.
The findings form part of ASSP’s Serious Injury and Fatality Prevention Convening Report, which examines why existing controls have not prevented serious incidents involving falls from height and lockout tagout failures.
Making safety standards accessible
Nearly 100 safety professionals and industry experts participated in working sessions in Chicago and Washington, DC.
Participants identified difficulties translating technical standards into practical information that workers and supervisors can readily understand and apply.
Suggested approaches included plain language guidance, pictograms, checklists and videos explaining standards and their requirements.
Lauren Bauerschmidt, Senior Manager of Standards and Technical Publications at ASSP, said: “Standards experts write very technical documents. They are written in shalls and shoulds, and you feel like you’re reading Old English or Shakespeare.
“But then you get the people who are actually going to be working at height, for example. What do they need to know? What does their supervisor need to tell them to get ready? It’s not in that language.
“A lot of times, what we hear is, ‘Tell me what to do. I don’t have time. Just break it down for me.’ But what’s hard is that with a lot of these things, there’s not just one answer.”
Testing workplace safety rules
Participants in the Washington session discussed a Rules of Rules governance test for assessing whether safety requirements are effective.
The approach considers whether a standard is fully known, makes sense to users and is consistently enforced.
ASSP said this could help determine whether standards are understandable to people who have not spent their careers specialising in a particular safety topic.
Bauerschmidt highlighted fall protection as an example where standards exist but injuries continue to occur, indicating potential gaps between written requirements and workplace implementation.
Improving standards implementation
ASSP’s Standards Based User Groups are examining these implementation challenges and will use their findings to develop additional tools and resources.
The practitioner led groups provide structured feedback between standards development teams and people working in the field.
Current work includes groups focused on fall protection and lockout tagout, two areas examined during ASSP’s serious injury and fatality prevention sessions.
