• Hard hat and gloves, examples of personal protective equipmenthardhat and work gloves image by tim elliott from Fotolia.com
  
  When working in any type of industry, supervisors or managers should have in place a set of safety operating procedures to help ensure the health of their workers while on the job. Safety operating procedures are standards of business that can be adapted to be industry-specific that require employees to perform tasks in such as way that it lessens the possibility of a safety hazard at work. These procedures should be noted for easy employee reference and training.
  
  

Check Machinery

• Check to make sure that all equipment and machinery is running correctly. This can be done by performing all regularly scheduled maintenance on the machines as well as running monthly or quarterly safety audits on the machinery to ensure that it is in proper working order. If an employee reports a malfunction, make sure that it is inspected and repaired prior to any employee resuming work utilizing the machine. Make sure that all maintenance and repairs are handled by a trained technician to avoid potentially hazardous mistakes.
  
  

Follow Instructions

• Make sure that all employees are properly trained on their equipment and that they follow the instructions for safe operation of machinery. Supervisors may wish to personally train employees or have them work with a senior staff member on new machinery before being allowed to operate it under limited or no supervision. Operating procedures for each machine should be recorded and available to all employees who may use the equipment.
  
  

Training and Personal Protective Equipment

• All employees should undergo basic on-the-job safety training that includes the correct use of any required personal protective equipment. This training should emphasize areas where the employee could possibly be harmed and how to efficiently and accurately report an accident or potential safety hazard that the employee witnesses. Safety training should be available to all employees and possibly required of those who work constantly under potentially hazardous conditions, such as inclimate weather or heavy machinery.