Employee Safety Handbook

An important aspect of an effective safety and health program is ensuring that all employees know and understand the basic concepts of working safely. Communication of company policies, expectations and employee responsibilities is critical if this goal is going to be achieved.

Per OSHA regulations, employers are required to develop and implement comprehensive written policies. Generally, such policies come directly from applicable regulations and state the actions the company will take to comply and outline employee responsibilities. Many of the documents contain a significant amount of technical detail, are not easily read or understood and often quite long.

The Employee Safety Handbook is an abbreviated version of all policies and procedures and communicates the essential site specific details for working safety at a given worksite. Many employers give an Employee Safety Handbook to all new hires.

It should contain:

• Expected behavior regarding the safety and health programs
• Emergency contact information
  • Telephone numbers for routine calls as well as emergencies to the police and fire departments and ambulance services
  • Company personnel to be notified during emergencies
    • In-house
    • After hours
• General actions to take during an emergency
• Employee responsibilities as required by individual written polices (i.e. hazard communications, permit-required confined spaces, etc.)

A major feature of the Virtual Safety Manager (VSM) is its ability to create a Safety Policies and Procedures Manual containing written programs to control against the major hazards identified at a given worksite. An additional step allows the user to create an Employee Safety Handbook that duplicates the subject content of the Safety Policies and Procedures Manual but only provides the essential details.