Proactive Workplace Safety and Why It’s Essential

A proactive approach to safety helps organizations prevent injuries, avoid costly OSHA violations and foster a strong safety culture built on accountability and communication.

• By Stu Kemppainen
• Oct 30, 2025

Safety is the most important component of every job site. Many companies use slogans such as “safety first,” but few rarely follow through until an injury, near miss, OSHA violation, or fatality occurs. Being a leader means taking responsibility and doing everything possible to keep your workforce safe. When it comes to a safe work environment, luck plays little role. There are important and manageable steps you can take to ensure your site takes a proactive approach to safety.

Proactive safety focuses on preventing accidents before they happen. This includes equipment maintenance and inspections, wearing and inspecting proper protective gear, stretch-and-flex programs before physical labor, worksite auditing (internally and externally sourced), incident investigation, and conducting engaging safety training. These measures not only prevent injury but also allow you to promote your organization’s safety program when bidding for work. Most major general contractors, subcontractors, and public entity clients and potential clients often reject bids if you don’t have a quality safety program. A company that lacks a robust safety plan will lose bids.

Becoming a proactively safe organization

Organizations tend to wait until after an incident or violation occurs to put in place and enforce safety measures that should have been in place all along. The attitude often is that operations don’t want to see safety until something serious happens, and then they wonder where you were. Commonly, this attitude stems from cost and production factors. For example, training is a big component of a proactively safe environment. However, courses can cost thousands. Additionally, when your training is underway, workers are taken away from productivity at their work site, resulting in lost labor time and what many consider lost money.

However, conducting safety training should be viewed in the macro and not the microeconomics of an organization. Serious injuries tend to cost tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of dollars. Fatalities, significant equipment damage, and site shut-downs due to incidents are expensive. It is estimated that the indirect costs of an incident can range from 3 to 5 times the direct costs. For instance, a shutdown at a major semiconductor plant in Arizona recently cost the owners millions due to a simple waterline break. It was caused by an employee dropping a tool from a relatively short distance, who failed to follow falling-object training. The costs of OSHA citations, injury reports, lost bids, and the loss of human life will skyrocket far beyond any training costs. 

While investing in training is important, it is crucial that the training is conducted properly and engagingly to benefit employees. Few like showing up to work only to find out about a four-hour safety training session. Consistently scheduled training sessions help ensure employees come in mentally prepared and ready to learn.

Hands-on and active training components are key. The fact of the matter is, nobody wants death by PowerPoint. Comprehension wanes as employees look at slideshows for hours on end. Making it interactive not only enhances enjoyment but also helps employees retain the information presented at the safety meeting.

What about e-learning and computer-based safety training? We get it —everyone needs to check a box now and then —but if your safety training program focuses on web-based, portal-style training, you are doing yourself and your staff a disservice. Ask yourself the last pertinent thing you remember from an online safety class. Now, how much do you remember that quality, hands-on confined space course you took when you had to use the air monitor, set up the retrieval system, and review your site-specific confined space rescue plan?

Small or mid-size companies often cannot afford this kind of training. However, they have options. Place a call to a local safety education organization, and they can provide you with a quote that will be far less costly than an incident. State and federal OSHA offices regularly offer free training. Simply inform them of your situation, training needs, and interest in doing the right thing. Some for-profit training companies can train multiple organizations simultaneously, offering discounted rates.

Another step to becoming a proactive company is leading by example and holding all management and employees accountable. What you permit you promote, and what you allow you encourage. For example, if you allow someone to wear inappropriate protective equipment, you’re permitting the situation across the company. You need to proactively promote safe behavior. If supervisors give a safety talk one day, then an employee spots them speeding in the company truck the next, they likely won’t take your safety program seriously.

Safety meetings at the start of every day are crucial on every job site, even if they're only 10 minutes long. This reinforces safety practices from previous training. It also identifies hazards and fosters a strong safety culture.

Conducting regular warm-up and stretching routines before physical labor is another proactive work practice. Ergonomic injuries (commonly called workplace musculoskeletal disorders or WMSDs) are the most common type of recordable work-related injury. Stretching and warming up the muscles, joints, and other soft tissues can help prevent them. Studies show they are helpful for more sedentary employees as well. 

Open and honest communication is also essential. Unfortunately, no matter how proactive you are about safety, an accident can still occur. If, for example, an employee in another state gets hurt using a tool utilized company-wide, the incident should be shared across the organization. This helps ensure all job sites are aware of the risk and can help prevent it from happening elsewhere.

Alternatively, overcommunication can undermine your safety culture. It can lead employees to grow paranoid and pick up on potential gossip about injuries. Communicate with them on how to avoid hazards that have occurred but leave the rest up to leadership on when and how to disseminate. HIPAA considerations must be adhered to. 

How to spot when safety efforts are slipping

There is a lot that goes into supervising, and it can be easy to let things slip through the cracks. A critical skill to learn is knowing how to spot when a site may be growing lax about safety standards.

When visiting jobs, make sure to check equipment inspection logs. These often need to be filled out once per shift. After a while, employees like to take this less seriously, filling out the same checkmarks, ink color, and initials day after day. If it looks too “pencil-whipped”, it likely is, and that is a sign logs are not being appropriately kept.

Forklifts are a common cause of workplace incidents. A proper daily inspection helps catch problems before they lead to an accident that could hurt someone. These inspections are OSHA requirements. If an inspector visits and the logs are incorrectly filled out, your organization can face citations. Additionally, if an accident occurs and the inspection logs are not correctly completed, your organization can be held liable. Accurate logs provide regulatory agencies with information that safety procedures were followed.

Look around, is the site clean and well-organized? Is debris picked up? Are there trash and water bottles strewn about? If a site looks untidy, the crew is likely neglecting to take a deeper dive into safety. There is an old saying. “How you do something is how you do everything.” While that may not always hold, it is a pretty accurate statement regarding an organization's safety program.  Once you see the workers become careless —just going through the motions —it is time to hold a safety meeting and discuss what a proactive job site looks like.

Working with OSHA

Make sure every supervisor knows their rights. Many field crewmen and supervisors think OSHA has free rein to walk onto a site and look around, but that is not accurate. They have to provide proper identification and give you sufficient time to get the appropriate company representative there.

You have the right to walk the job site with them. This demonstrates that your company is engaged and transparent. It also helps address minor issues immediately, rather than waiting for a citation or written notice.

It is also a good idea to take photos of everything they are photographing. When OSHA takes pictures, those images will be a part of their official report. Taking your own ensures you have a copy of the same evidence. This also protects you if conditions change after inspection.

Know precisely which incidents need to be reported if a worker chips a front tooth, which needs to be reported to OSHA. It may not seem like a big deal, and the machismo construction and industrial cultures may laugh it off, but teeth are considered bones. Broken bones are reportable injuries. Every supervisor should know what to report and not to report. Failing to do so correctly can lead to fines and affect your compliance history.

Prioritizing proactive safety is essential. It not only prevents injuries, reduces workers’ compensation premiums, and minimizes OSHA violations, but also saves lives. It keeps you competitive when bidding work and promotes a positive workplace culture. Encourage all project managers and owners to go on site walks and train with employees. Your workers will respect the culture when they see their boss participate.