Injury Prevention can happen in many ways – it could be an in depth analysis of your recordable incidents, close calls and other strategic objectives within the company or it could be as simple as reviewing your first aid records to see if any patterns emerge then choosing to focus on a specific injury type.

Ultimately, your company may strive to reduce all injury types. But when it comes to creating sustainable change and reducing injuries across the operations it can help to start small and specific with the change and expand the effort as you see progress.

You may find your first aid records for your engineering crew show multiple sprains happening from jumping off a slash pile, a few bruises and cuts from falling down and a tweaked knee from tripping over gear left on the landing. It is up to you as an owner, supervisor or Joint health & safety committee to decide where to start in tackling slips, trips and fall injuries. You may decide that reducing or eliminating the multiple lost time incidents around the sprains represent the best value for your effort or it might make the most sense to focus on reducing or eliminating the more ‘expensive’ (in terms of claims costs, downtime and worker injury) incident of tripping.

If you are just getting started in Injury Prevention prioritizing your efforts and ensuring you give enough information, support and coaching to supervisors and workers to tackle a single or just a few issues will drive enough of an improvement to motivate your crews to take on another.

Starting small and demonstrating improvements to yourself and your team helps to build momentum in making further changes.

In the attached injury prevention package we focus on tips and techniques to help you educate yourself and your workers, improve your safety management system and inspire practical solutions for loss prevention in your operations.

We encourage you to customize the material to your company, include your specific policies, procedures or equipment when conducting crew talks or program reviews.

If you need ideas for getting started contact the Council at 1‐877‐741‐1060 for free consultation. Experienced forest safety professionals are available free of charge to provide Advocacy to you in reducing injuries in your business.

How to Use This Tool

• To enhance current injury prevention efforts within your organization
• To develop a slips, trips & falls prevention training program
• To develop a safety bulletin or internal training memo for posting
• To provide an educational component to crew safety meetings/tailgate meetings

Recommended Delivery

• The slips trips and falls presentation can be presented to workers or used to build your knowledge as a safety leader.
• Injury prevention efforts are most successfully when targeted as part of a specific strategy – prioritize what injury types to focus on and provide support to workers, supervisors, first aid personnel and Joint Health & Safety Committee members to help reduce those target areas.

Suggested Practices

• Orientation ‐ During the orientation process workers should be introduced to information about how slips, trips and falls happen and the importance of self‐care in reducing these types of injuries.
• Safety Bulletins/Alerts – You may wish to produce a Safety Alert or Bulletin for your company following a slip, trip or fall injury. This package may provide additional background information to include in the Alert.
• Crew Talks/Safety Meetings ‐ Refresh and expand worker knowledge, A changes in terrain type, weather conditions or job tasks are great opportunities to remind workers of their slips, trips & falls awareness training during crew talks, company safety meetings or in printed company safety materials.
• On‐site orientations/Visitor Orientations ‐ Provide further information and training on moving safely through the bush or on the worksite at start‐up safety meetings when establishing bush camps.
• Program Development – Management and/or the Joint Health & Safety Committee can use the information provided to further expand or develop in‐house training programs

Innovative Applications

• If you have developed an innovative way to get the message out to your workers we would love to know! The Council shares Innovation Alerts to help companies improve their safety management system, to subscribe click here.

Injury Prevention Resource Order Form

Slips, Trips & Falls Injury Prevention Resource Package - PDF 4 MB

Slips, Trips & Falls Injury Prevention Webinar -  Recording