Prevent Injuries to Your Church and School Employees
Churches and private schools need to take a proactive role to prevent injuries on their property. Nonprofit organizations, report tens of thousands of work-related injuries to their employees every year.
As an employer, it is important to look for areas where you can improve safety and reduce accidents.
Sometimes this only requires a minor change, while other times it could require your church or private school to spend additional monies to help protect your staff.
While workers’ compensation insurance is there to provide financial protections for your nonprofit organization and the employees who work there, it should be viewed as a last resort option.
Please use the following guidelines to help your nonprofit organization to reevaluate safety procedures, develop and implement new risk management practices and procedures for your employees.
Identify and Reduce Slips, Trips and Falls Areas to Prevent Injuries
It is important for your church or private school, to identify areas of concerns that may cause an employee to experience a work related accident. Below is a short list of guidelines to help prevent injuries and assist you in adding to your existing church risk management program.
- Remove clutter and obstacles that may be present around work areas.
- Ensure walking surfaces are clean and clear of debris such a mud and leaves, to help eliminate slip-and-fall exposures.
- Manage power cords, telephone lines, and internet wiring to minimize slip-and-fall hazards.
- Space out office furniture allowing easy access to workspaces.
- Require all employees to wear proper shoes related to their job duties.
- Install proper lighting inside and outside of your church or private school buildings and parking lots.
- Place “Wet Floor” signs where slip-and-fall hazards exist. Keep signs in accessible locations.
- All employees need to be encouraged to clean up spills immediately
- Encourage all employees to pick up trash located in and around the property.
- Keep stairs clean and clear of items that create walking hazards
- Inspect handrails to ensure they are securely attached and not damaged.
- Provide secure, continuous handrails on each side of a stairway.
- Maintain adequate lighting on stairways, steps, and entry ways, throughout the church and private school.
- Check carpeting for torn or loose areas which can present trip hazards.
- Resurface parking lots to remove trip hazards caused by large cracks and uneven surfaces.
Implement Proper Lifting Techniques to Reduce Back Injuries
Many workers’ compensation insurance claims, can be dramatically reduced if not completely prevent injuries through the use of property lifting techniques. Help prevent injuries by reminding your employees to use proper lifting techniques at your quarterly staff meetings, serves as a reminder for everyone.
Here are a few lifting guidelines you can prevent injuries in your next school safety meeting.
- Implement quarterly employee safety training meeting on back injury causes and proper lifting postures.
- Remind employees to ask for help when handling large, heavy, or bulky items.
- Provide back support equipment to employees who frequently pick up heavy objects.
- Provide carts and dollies to assist in transporting heavy objects and equipment.
Prevent Injuries By Eliminating Church and Private School Collision Hazards
During your quarterly meetings we recommend for your church and private school leadership team, to ask your support staff for ideas they see would help reduce injuries. Sometime your best resource for information comes from your employees, as they see and feel pain related to different task they perform.
Please review a few more ideas on how to prevent injuries.
- Design the layout of each office space, classrooms, walkways, halls, rooms, and aisles to allow for a smooth traffic flow.
- Limit the height of stacked materials to be no greater than 6 feet, to prevent overstocking and tipping. Lower heights may be required for less secure items.
- Provide motion sensor lighting within the building, along exterior sidewalks and in parking areas. This can reduce and eliminate hidden collision hazards throughout your property.
- Paint curbs, parking stops and pad other objects like basketball court poles, that cannot be removed to help reduce the possibility of direct contact or injury if contact occurs.
All your staff bring value and have ideas on how to reduce risk. Through these safety meetings, you may discover other areas that may need to be addressed which can help reduce church liability insurance claims in the future.
Your Church Insurance Agent Provides Helpful Ideas to Prevent Injuries
Integrity Now Insurance Brokers is here to help you identify areas where you could prevent injuries to your church and private school staff.
As your church insurance specialist, we have access to countless resources at our fingertips.
We provide our clients with free access to Gotsafety. They provide thousands of safety documents, your church could use in your next safety meeting. Working with a church insurance agency provides your church or private school with the confidence of knowing we are experts.
We are not just safety experts, we can also help save money on your churches insurance coverage such as church property insurance, general liability insurance, directors and officers insurance, bus insurance, abuse coverage, employment practice liability insurance, group health insurance, and more.
Your church insurance brokers are here to serve you and your church. Reach out to us today and see how we can help.
