A Workplace Accident and Injury Reduction (AWAIR) Program

Tags SOP Safety

Purpose

The purpose of this document is to provide standardized procedures for preventing workplace injuries and illnesses as well as assigning authority and responsibility for the implementation and communication of the occupational safety and health program. These procedures will be followed as applicable by all faculty, staff, student employees, contractors, and volunteers at The College of St. Scholastica (The College). 

The MN AWAIR program requirements are outlined in MN Statute 182.653 sub-division 8. 

The North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) code of 611310 (Colleges, Universities, and Professional Schools) is not yet listed as required per MN Statute 5208.1500, but The College recognizes that implementing an AWAIR program is a best practice and has chosen to do so proactively.

Alignment with the Strategic Plan and Benedictine Value of the Year

  • 2025-2030 Strategic Plan - Pillar 4: Our Catholic Benedictine Legacy - Goal 2: Strengthen Well-Being and Belonging Within the CSS Community
  • Benedictine Values
    • Community: Safety is a collective effort - it relies on everyone's compliance and it benefits everyone. To be successful we must care for one another, and honor each person’s dignity. 
    • Hospitality: ensure everyone in the community receives appropriate safety orientation for their role, which is why our safety documents should be accessible for all.
    • Respect: use inclusive examples during training, adapt PPE to individual needs.
    • Stewardship: safety measures are in place to care for the resources entrusted to us.
    • Love of learning: a safe environment allows people to explore and grow.
  • We believe that employee safety and health is as important to our business as productivity and quality. No job is so important or urgent that we cannot take the time to perform the task safely. 
  • AWAIR Goal #1 - Maintain an annual incident rate which is better than the 75th percentile of the state and national average for our NAICS code. 
    • To achieve our goal we will engage employees to provide proactive input for the continuous improvement of our safety programs. 
    • Employees will be encouraged to make safe choices and form good habits by utilizing an incentive program for “reporting” safe behavior by others on the Employee Safety page on the MyCSS website.
    • Safety Committee meetings will be re-designed and will include representatives from all areas of the college, and all sites. The group will meet every other month at a minimum.
    • The safety training process will be refreshed, including more thorough tracking and a gap analysis.
    • Workspace walkthroughs will be implemented on a routine basis to ensure spaces are reviewed with a fresh set of eyes at least annually. 
      • Have clear deadlines for submitting to department chair. 
      • Shared classrooms could be reviewed by facilities - possibly different review frequency based on hazards - lecture halls vs labs, etc. 
  • ​​​​​​​​​​​​​​AWAIR Goal #2 - Foster a safety culture where all employees feel qualified and encouraged to bring forward suggestions and concerns, and feel empowered to take action to keep their workplace safe. 
    • Employees will receive ongoing training regarding situational awareness and The College’s crisis response plans. 
    • A worker safety page has been created on MyCSS website to provide a single location for employees to find the most up to date safety information. 
    • Employee suggestions will be proactively collected using a new online reporting platform on the worker safety page. 
    • Timely safety information will be added to the Saints Newsletter. 

Scope

This document applies to all faculty, staff, student employees, and volunteers of The College of St. Scholastica, at all College campuses and facilities, as well as at any College-sponsored or offsite events.

Responsibilities

  1. All Faculty, Staff, and Student Employees
    • Workers must comply with all applicable health and safety regulations, company policies and established work practices. This includes, but is not limited to:
      • Understand unsafe acts or failure to report hazards endangers not only themselves, but their peers, our students, and visitors. 
      • Adhere to safety and health rules and procedures at all times. Including safety-related signage, signals, and directions.
      • Promptly report any hazards to their supervisor and/or the OSH&EM Director. 
      • Participate in safety training and follow-up training sessions. 
      • Have a personal commitment to safety and health. 
      • Report all accidents or injuries to their supervisors in a timely manner. 
      • Use personal protective equipment properly and when required. 
      • Make suggestions for improvements to our health and safety program.
      • Learn and understand the hazards in their assigned work areas. 
      • Stop work if an imminent hazard is present. 
  2. Leadership 
    • Leadership is committed to instilling a culture of safety in the workplace and is responsible for:
      • Approve and implement this AWAIR Program.
      • Management will be committed to safety and health in the workplace. 
      • They will ensure that appropriate funding and resources are available to implement and maintain the federal, state and local environmental health and safety programs. 
      • Encourage workers to take a proactive role in maintaining a safe and healthy work environment. 
      • Provide employees and supervisors with the authority to identify and correct hazards.
      • Integrating safety and health goals and objectives into business systems and processes.
      • Recognizing workers for their safety and health efforts.
      • Notify their supervisor if they are unable to perform their job duties safely. This includes inability due to health concerns or medications. Working under the influence of alcohol or illegal drugs is specifically forbidden.
  3. Program Administrator
    • Our AWAIR Program Administrator is the Occupational Safety, Health, and Emergency Management Director
    • The IIPP Administrator has the authority and responsibility for implementing the provisions of this program. Additional responsibilities of the IIPP Administrator include: 
      • Administer this AWAIR Program
      • Establish, communicate and measure safety and health rules, objectives and yearly goals. 
      • Advise senior management on safety and health issues, and recommend methods for correction.
      • Respond to employee safety concerns in a timely fashion. 
      • Serving as a liaison with governmental agencies, insurance companies and medical providers.
      • Conduct bi-monthly safety committee meetings.
      • Carry out accident investigations and coordinate responses to worker health or safety-related complaints or concerns.
      • Maintain a permanent safety committee. 
      • Coordinate between employees, managers, and top leadership to develop strong safety and health guidelines and policies
      • Comply with federal, state and local regulations and policies, including maintaining a record of accidents, injuries, and hazard reports. 
      • Create and maintain all required OSHA logs and other regulatory reporting. 
      • They will work with HR to assign annual training through the online training system and review completion records.
      • Ensure all supervisors, department managers and employees have received appropriate training. 
      • Reinforce positive safety behavior. 
      • Conduct initial and follow-up safety and health training. 
      • Conduct safety training before non-routine tasks are performed. 
      • Enforce safety rules and procedures. 
      • Maintain ongoing training to keep up to date on local, state, and federal safety and health regulations and best practices. 
  4. Safety Committee
    • Provide feedback on and approve this AWAIR Program.
    • Bring forward suggestions and concerns from their team or work area.
    • Collaborate to review injury and near miss reports to help determine root cause, and determine the best corrective actions. 
    • Bring corrective action plans, and information from the safety committee back to their teams and work areas. 
  5. Managers, Supervisors, Directors, Deans, Chairs
    • Managers and supervisors are responsible for implementing and maintaining the AWAIR Program in their work areas and for answering worker questions about the AWAIR Program. A copy of this AWAIR Program is available from each manager and supervisor. Additional responsibilities of managers and supervisors include:
      • Supervisors are in charge of the safety and health in their department. 
      • They must reflect an interest in workplace health and safety by setting a good example and complying with programs. They will play an active and continuous role in safety and promoting the wellbeing of the workforce.
      • Adhere to safety and health rules and procedures. 
      • Report and correct hazards. 
      • Assist with accident investigations. 
      • Carry out department safety and health inspections. 
      • Have a personal commitment to safety and health. 
      • Evaluate the safe and healthful work performance of their direct-reports, and provide or assign additional training to those who need improvement. 

Procedures

Safety Communication

  • Management recognizes that open, two-way communication between management and workers on health and safety issues is essential to an injury-free workplace. The following system of communication is designed to facilitate a continuous flow of safety and health information between management and workers in a form that is readily understandable and consists of one or more of the following methods. To ensure effective communication of safety and health matters, translation will be provided when appropriate.

Training

  • New Hire
    • Employees will receive training prior to beginning hazardous work. Training will be a combination of online and in person training. 
    • First day of class - emergency routes posted, equipment, floor plans available to faculty, so they can inform students
  • Recurring Training
    • Annual Recurring training will be a combination of online and in person training.
    • If procedures aren’t being followed, retraining may be needed as part of the corrective and preventative action. 

Plan Availability

  • This plan will be made available to all employees on the Employee Safety Team Dynamix website. 

Safety Meetings

  • Regularly scheduled safety committee meetings.
  • Discussion of safety in departmental worker meetings.
    • Add a bullet point to the meeting agendas prompting people to bring up concerns if they have any
    • Annual topic to discuss - things like emergency exits, who to reach out to with safety concerns, 

Hazard Reporting

  • The TeamDynamix Ticketing system will be used for workers to inform Occupational Safety, Health & Emergency Mgmt Director about workplace hazards.
  • Alternatively, concerns can be written or typed and left in the Occupational Safety, Health & Emergency Mgmt Director’s mailbox in the facilities office in Tower Hall. The OSH&EM Director will transfer these written reports into the Team Dynamix ticketing system for consistency and tracking. 
  • The OSH&EM Director will work with employees and supervisors to correct the hazard reported, including stopping work if necessary due to the threat the hazard presents. 

Open Door Policy

  • The College of St. Scholastica encourages workers to report workplace hazards without fear of reprisal, and as such, we have an open door policy for workers to bring forward any safety and health issues, concerns, questions, comments and suggestions to management.

Anti-Reprisal Policy

  • The College of St. Scholastica will not discharge or discriminate against any worker in any manner for reporting unsafe or unhealthy work conditions and practices. 
  • We will hold any manager who violates this policy accountable by means of our established progressive disciplinary procedures. 

Obligation to Report

  • Employees who have knowledge of unsafe or unhealthy work conditions or practices and intentionally conceal this information are in violation of our policy and are subject to our established progressive disciplinary procedures.

Hazard Assessments

  1. This AWAIR Program strives to identify, analyze and control new and existing hazards, procedures and/or operations. This will be accomplished by investigating all accidents and near misses, completing OSHA 300 form and accident report forms and conducting routine inspections and performing a Job Safety Analysis. 
  2. Supervisor and/or the Occupational Safety, Health & Emergency Management Director will investigate all accidents and near misses. This is necessary to ensure that a common or hidden hazard is not causing continuous accidents and injuries. The investigation will be fact finding as opposed to fault finding. The investigators will try to determine how the accident happened, why the accident happened and how future accidents can be eliminated. 
  3. An accident report form will be completed for each accident and injury. These forms will be used to track accident and injury trends and will be reviewed at least yearly. 
  4. Departments will be inspected quarterly and a facility wide inspection will be conducted yearly to document and correct potential hazards. These inspections will determine if safety rules and procedures are being followed, if safety equipment is available and if workplace hazards are present. 
  5. This inspection will be coordinated between the department chair/supervisor and the safety committee representative from that area, to be conducted by someone they designate. 
  6. A Job Safety Analysis (JSA) will be conducted for the jobs and departments which represent the greatest hazards. These forms will be established by each department and reviewed on a yearly basis. The JSA will be used for training so employees will be able to perform jobs more safely and be able to recognize hazards.

Hazard Control

  1. A priority system will be used for correcting multiple hazards in the workplace. This system classifies the hazards in four degrees, imminent danger, serious, other than serious and regulatory. 
  2. Imminent Danger
    • A condition or practice in which death or serious physical harm or illness could be expected to happen immediately.  
  3. Serious 
    • A condition or practice in which serious physical harm or illness could happen. 
    • A hazard where there is a substantial possibility that death or serious physical harm could result. 
  4. Other than Serious 
    • A situation in which the accident or illness most likely would not result in death or serious physical harm. 

Accident Investigation

  1. The department manager, safety committee representative, and OSH&EM Director will investigate all accidents and significant near misses. A written accident investigation form will be completed describing where the accident occurred, how the accident occurred, equipment involved, witness statements and how the accident could have been prevented.
  2. An effort must be made to assume positive intent. The investigation should focus on what led to the un-safe action or decision, and how to make the safe choice the easy choice in the future. 
  3. The corrective and preventative actions determined by the investigation will be distributed to other employees in that work area, and to the supervisors of other work areas to ensure corrections are implemented across all sites and departments. 

Program Enforcement

  1. All employees will have safety and health performance standards built into their job descriptions and/or performance reviews. We believe this makes our workplace safer by encouraging positive behavior. 

Performance Reviews

  1. If an employee performs as expected in the AWAIR and other safety programs they will score high in their performance review. This recognition will be taken into account for raises and promotions. 
  2. If an employee does not follow the safety rules required by the AWAIR or other safety programs the employee will receive a low score on the or performance review and/or disciplinary action. 

Disciplinary Procedures 

  • Disciplinary action will be:
    • First Occurrence in two calendar years: Verbal and written reminder 
    • Second Occurrence in two calendar years: Written warning saved in personnel file
    • Third occurrence two calendar years: leave without pay and written warning saved in personnel file
  • Safety occurrences are not always repetitive. The two year rolling timeline provides positive motivation for an employee to restore their clean safety record.
  • Termination may result from continued negligence, or for egregious, wilful negligence without prior occurrences. 

Program Review

  • This program shall be reviewed annually at a minimum, and revised if needed. The annual review must demonstrate how each section of this AWAIR plan has been fulfilled. 

Training Requirements

  1. All employees affected by these procedures must be given training on the procedures, and given the opportunity to ask questions prior to beginning work. 
  2. Initial training will outline our goals and responsibilities of the AWAIR Program and each employee will be trained on hazards associated with their workstation. Refresher training will be conducted each year and training before non-routine tasks will be conducted when necessary. 

Safety Information

  • All pertinent safety information is included above. 

Record Retention

  • All written and electronic records produced by the procedures in this document will be maintained in accordance with the document retention procedures of The College of St. Scholastica unless more stringent requirements exist.

Deviation from Procedure

  • Any deviation from this procedure must have prior written approval from the Occupational Safety, Health & Emergency Management Director. Procedure deviations will only be approved on rare occurrences with thorough pre-planning and justification. 
  • Deviations due to process improvements require an update to this written procedure prior to implementation. 

Definitions

  • AWAIR: Workplace Accident and Injury Reduction Program. This is also sometimes called an Injury and Illness Prevention Program (IIPP). 
  • FROI: First Report of Injury. 
  • Near Miss: An unplanned event that did not result in injury, illness, or damage but had the potential to do so. Only a fortunate break in the chain of events prevented the unfavorable outcome (they were “lucky”). 
  • Hazard: An unsafe workplace condition that could cause an accident or injury if left uncorrected.
  • Engineering Control: A mechanical means put in place to reduce the risk of injury or illness, such as machine guards or a ventilation system. 
  • Administrative Control: a work practice put into place to reduce the risk of injury or illness, such as task rotation or training. 
  • Personal Protective Equipment (PPE): Protective equipment that is worn by an employee to reduce the risk of injury or illness, such as gloves, safety goggles, labcoats, or safety boots.

References

  • Minnesota State Statute 182.653 RIGHTS AND DUTIES OF EMPLOYERS
  • MNOSHA compliance: AWAIR program. Minnesota Department of Labor and Industry. https://www.dli.mn.gov/business/workplace-safety-and-health/mnosha-compliance-awair-program 
     
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