How to strengthen your safety program results

A strong worker safety program does more than satisfy compliance requirements. It helps protect employees, reduce preventable disruption, support better workers’ compensation outcomes, and strengthen the day-to-day operation of your business.

The challenge is knowing whether your program is delivering these results—and where to focus first when gaps exist.

Start with a practical baseline

This is the goal of Nationwide’s STEP resource and safety program assessment. Together, they provide a structured way to evaluate and strengthen four key areas that influence safety performance:

• Selection and orientation
• Training and safety programs
• Events and losses
• Post-event learning and corrective action

The interactive STEP assessment provides a score for each area, an overall average, and a identifies an opportunity area to prioritize. That gives you a practical starting point instead of a list of disconnected safety ideas. You can use the assessment before launching a safety initiative, select one priority area, and repeat the assessment later to help measure progress.

Take the Nationwide worker safety assessment | Explore the Every STEP Counts program

Strengthen key areas that influence outcomes

1. Selection and orientation: reduce early-tenure risk

Hiring practices and onboarding play a critical role in safety performance. That is why clarity in job demands and workplace safety expectations are essential. New employees may face greater injury risk as they learn job tasks, the hazards of the job, and the controls that apply. Readiness to work independently also means employees feel comfortable asking questions and exercising stop-work authority when conditions are unsafe.

Ask:

• Are job descriptions current and aligned with the physical demands and hazards of the role?
• Do new hires receive role-specific safety orientation before independent work?
• Do supervisors verify understanding and competency rather than assuming readiness?
• Do employees know they can ask questions and stop work when conditions are unsafe?

Consider tracking:

• 90-day and first-year injury rate for new hires
• The percentage of safety-critical roles with current job descriptions and a job hazard analysis
• Percentage of safety observations submitted by employees with less than one year of service

2. Training and safety programs: turn activity into changed behavior

Training is most useful when employees can apply it on the job and supervisors reinforce it. A strong training and safety program makes it easy for employees to identify hazards, understand controls, raise concerns and see that those concerns lead to action.

Ask:

• Is training tailored to the exposures employees actually face?
• Do supervisors observe critical tasks and provide timely coaching?
• Are suggested corrective actions assigned, tracked, and checked for effectiveness?

Consider tracking:

• Safe work verification rate after training completion
• Frequency of critical-control observations and coaching
• Closure rate by the due date for suggested corrective actions
• Injury frequency rates by injury type, cause of loss, work task, or training area

Completion of training alone is not proof that a program is working. The more useful question is whether training and coaching are changing work practices and reducing risk.

3. Events and losses: make the first response count

Near misses and safety observations reveal hazards before someone is injured. How your management team responds matters. Prompt reporting reflects trust and a strong safety culture. When an event involves an injury, prompt reporting can help your organization support the employee with appropriate care and may help initiate the claims process sooner.

Ask:

• Are safety observations and near misses reported and reviewed, or only injuries?
• How quickly are events and injuries reported?
• Is there a clear pathway for appropriate care for non-life-threatening injuries?

Consider tracking:

• Percentage of events and injuries reported within the target timeframe
• Percentage of eligible injury events using Nurse Triage
• Median time for corrective-action closure on event-related safety observations
• The ratio of medical-only claims to claims with lost workdays

More near-miss reports do not automatically mean worse safety performance. An increase may indicate that employees trust the reporting process. The important question is whether your organization investigates the reports and closes the underlying gaps.

4. Post-event learning and corrective action: fix the system to prevent the next event

A safety program should not end when an incident report is completed. A strong post-event process looks beyond individual error to identify system factors. Effective organizations look for systemic causes, make operational corrections, and support employees through recovery and return to work. This helps your company find solutions that address the broader system—not just the individual incident or its immediate safety impact.

Ask:

• Does the event analysis identify work factors and system causes, not just an individual mistake?
• Are corrective actions assigned to an owner, tracked to completion, and verified as effective?
• Are modified-duty and return-to-work options defined before an injury occurs?
• Are lessons learned shared with the people who perform the work?

Consider tracking:

• The percentage of events with a documented systemic cause and assigned corrective action
• Median time for corrective-action closure on post-event safety findings
• The percentage of eligible cases with a documented return-to-work plan and appropriate modified-duty or transitional work
• Median days to sustained return to work

Improve one priority area at a time

Trying to overhaul an entire safety program at once can create activity without sustained improvement. A more practical approach is to:

1. Complete the STEP assessment to establish a baseline.
2. Select the area with the greatest opportunity.
3. Use Nationwide resource links on the STEP page
4. Choose two or three supporting measures—ideally one process measure and one outcome measure.
5. Assign an owner, target date, and review date.
6. Re-measure both the STEP score and the selected outcomes.

For example, if events and losses are the greatest opportunity, you might track reporting time from injury awareness as a process measure and lost-time rate or days to sustained return to work as an outcome measure. This approach helps answer the business question that matters most: are your efforts producing better results, or just more activity?

Use the STEP program as a way to turn your team’s discussions about safety and workers’ compensation from generic safety advice into a measurable conversation.