At least once each year, evaluate your safety and health effort. Are you achieving your goals? If not, what are the reasons? Review injuries and illnesses, which can help you identify patterns.

Were investigations thorough? Did the reports identify causes and recommend how to control or eliminate them? Reports that leave you wondering why accidents happened indicate that you need to improve accident investigation or reporting.

Does your workplace have hazardous chemicals, loud machinery, equipment that may need to be locked or tagged out, or respiratory hazards? Such hazards may require written programs for hazard communication, audiometric testing, or control of hazardous energy. Identify and review the programs that affect your workplace. Make sure that you’ve implemented them and that they’re effective. Your safety committee can help identify hazards that require written programs and review existing programs.

For the next year. Use the results of the evaluation to set new goals. Describe what needs to be done to accomplish each goal, determine who’s responsible for accomplishing it, and set a date for achieving it.