Published 8 Sep 2023
What is an Office Safety Checklist?
An office safety checklist is a tool used to verify that companies comply with safety regulations and ensure that the office is a safe working environment. Office safety checklists generally cover the equipment, lighting, and workstations, including the most hazardous areas such as the floor, stairways, and aisles. Sometimes called an office safety inspection checklist or an office hazards checklist, it can also be used to audit workplace safety procedures, perform risk assessments, evaluate office ergonomics, conduct staff induction, and document incidents.
In this article
- Why is an Office Safety Inspection Checklist Important?
- What to Include in the Checklist?
- What are the Most Common Office Hazards to Catch Using a Checklist?
- How to Conduct an Efficient Office Safety Inspection with a Checklist
- FAQs About Office Safety Checklist
- Perform an Effective Office Safety Inspection with SafetyCulture
- Featured Office Safety Checklists
Why is an Office Safety Inspection Checklist Important?
Maintaining office safety with checklists provides safety administrators with a comprehensive guide to performing regular inspections. They also help ensure that each aspect and office area that needs checking will be reviewed systematically and nothing will be missed. In addition, these kinds of checklists proactively identify hazards or safety issues which improves the chance of solving them before they cause a negative impact on employees or the workplace itself.
What to Include in the Checklist?
An office safety checklist should generally include the following sections before being further broken down into more specific components that are according to business needs:
General Information
This section is the introductory part of the inspection and includes general items such as:
- Business nature
- Office level/floor
- Number of employees
- Manager/Supervisor
Inspection
This is the main section of an office safety checklist, it includes a review of the following items and smaller elements under them:
- Walking surfaces
- Furniture and office equipment
- Bookcases, shelves, and cabinets
- Indoor air quality
- Copier room
- Housekeeping
- Training
- Worker awareness
- Fire prevention
- Electrical safety
- First aid
- Procedures
- Ergonomics
- Security
- Parking lot
Completion
Completion or closing section includes:
- Observations/recommendations
- Name and signature of inspector
What are the Most Common Office Hazards to Catch Using a Checklist?
An effective office safety checklist will help protect office workers from hazards that can be found in offices. Here are examples of the most common office hazards that office safety checklists aim to spot:
Slips, trips, and falls
One of the reasons why offices should be kept clean and tidy is to prevent slips, trips, and falls. Keeping the floor clear of obstructions and having spills cleaned right away can help prevent incidents in the office.
Ergonomic injuries
Time spent sitting down, working at a desk, or in front of a computer for hours on end may result in ergonomic injuries if a workstation is not ergonomic for the individual office worker. Chairs, ideally, should be adjustable, and desks and monitors should be at the right height.
Indoor air quality
Indoor air quality needs to be clean and free of particles that may cause illness. Having the ventilation system regularly tested and maintained will help keep the air quality ideal.
How to Conduct an Efficient Office Safety Inspection with a Checklist
When performing an office safety inspection, it is important to establish consistency to be able to identify patterns and recognize areas for improvement. With the help of an office safety checklist, the following are the five steps to help you determine a more effective approach to inspections:
1. Strategize your inspection
Before anything else, prepare the guidelines that would be used in implementing the endeavor. These guidelines can include specific instructions and information such as the schedule or frequency of the inspection, the name of inspectors, and other relevant resources to follow like government-mandated ones or industry best practices.
While planning for the inspection, it is also best to specify any other tools to be used such as barcode scanners, cameras for documentation, or an office inspection checklist—where all items that need checking are listed down.
2. Conduct office safety inspections
Once a comprehensive guide is designed, it is time to carry through with the plan of inspections. Ensure all aspects of the assessment will be thoroughly reviewed and verified, including the common office hazards mentioned above and the specific items previously identified in the planning stage.
With this, it’s ideal to use any type of document or tool that would ease the process of data gathering for each conducted inspection.
3. Study the gathered data
This step is the part where all the gathered data from the inspections will be reviewed and analyzed. Study the trends in which issues are noticed and recognize patterns where most non-compliance is observed.
Also, note if there’s a particular process that helps establish the need for safety inspections—this way, it’s easier to enforce them as a best practice.
4. Identify areas for improvement
Once an inspection report is formed, it is time to identify areas where changes need to be executed. Create corrective actions to potential safety hazards and mitigate them by proactively addressing employee concerns to prevent the reoccurrence of such issues.
As well, make sure that proposed measures are actionable and comprehensible. In this manner, it’s easier to track the process’ effectiveness and impact.
5. Implement changes
Finally, based on the result of the inspections, apply the changes to daily operations. This can be per office or even at an enterprise level—depending on the needs of the organization itself.
Do not forget to document any changes and do a follow-up whenever necessary. If an action is determined to not be performing as it ought to be, there is a chance that another solution needs to be identified and applied.
Using tools that ease the continuous implementation of all these steps improves the level of efficiency and effectiveness of the inspections.
FAQs About Office Safety Checklist
Routine inspections should be done on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. The frequency would heavily depend on the type of industry an office or workplace is in, but if they deal with heavy machinery and equipment, it is ideal to conduct inspections before every start of a shift. With the help of an office safety checklist, you can standardize inspections and emphasize crucial areas to always look into.
This generic template is an example of a digital office safety checklist. It consists of the usual items that are reviewed during office safety inspections. Further, this is a sample report of completed office safety assessment.
Perform an Effective Office Safety Inspection with SafetyCulture
As an office safety inspection tool, SafetyCulture (formerly iAuditor) can help safety officers and managers perform regular inspections seamlessly. Aside from the ability to provide ready-to-download and customizable office safety checklists, SafetyCulture can also help users do the following:
- Identify trends, patterns and potential hazards with the Analytics dashboard
- Create timely corrective actions directly from the app and assign them to the right people for swift response
- Communicate effectively within and outside the team using the Heads Up feature
- Capture evidence such as photos and videos then attach them to the inspection for clearer context
- Generate office safety inspection reports and send them to relevant stakeholders
Featured Office Safety Checklists
OSHA Office Safety Checklist
Based on the OSHA Office Safety Standards, use this office safety checklist when conducting an audit to identify hazards in the office. This OSHA safety checklist includes checking for the following items:
- General inspection
- Electrical Systems
- Material storage
Take photos of defects and damages including issues with electrical equipment. Notify your safety managers or supervisors of issues for fast resolution before more serious problems occur.
Office Safety Walkthrough Checklist
Visually inspect the physical structure and facilities of the office by using this template. Do an audit of the condition of the building main doors and entrances, stairways and ailes, floors, air and lighting systems, office tools and equipment, and bulletin boards and signs. Check emergency equipment, storage of harmful substances, and the sanitation practices in washrooms and kitchens. Check the level of security by evaluating the implementation of security and emergency procedures.
Office Risk Assessment Template
This office risk assessment template can be used to identify general at-risk activities in your office workplace and help you prioritize and implement control measures. This template includes a risk matrix to help you select the severity and likelihood of an office hazard. Click here to browse our risk assessment templates.
OSHA Ergonomic Computer Workstation Checklist
Office workers who spend long hours seated at a desk and working on a computer have a high-risk of acquiring ergonomic strains and other injuries. These result from repetitive movements, sitting in awkward positions, straining neck, and static postures. Use this OSHA Computer Workstation template to promote neutral postures, comfortable seating, right lighting level, and proper positioning of computer devices.
New Starter Onboarding Checklist
Conducting proper job orientation can help set clear expectations of job responsibilities and limitations. Use this template to confirm if onboarding topics are relevant and effectively disseminated to new hires. This includes orientation of job responsibilities, hours of work, payroll and time reports, employees’ rights, information systems, office environment and proper usage of office equipment. It also captures recommendations for safety planning.
Electrical Safety Inspection Report Checklist
Working with electricity, can cause serious injuries. Use this template to check if the worker complies with electrical safety measures in the worksite. Inspect electrical equipment (e.g switches, power lines, appliances, installations, wiring, cables and cords) to eliminate potential hazards. Use SafetyCulture (iAuditor) to assign an action to the persons-in charge of electrical repairs and maintenance. Browse our other electrical safety inspection checklists here.
Monthly Fire Extinguisher Inspection Checklist
Fire extinguishers are vital in fire emergency preparedness. Regular inspections to check overall condition and maintenance tags can help ensure equipment is fully functional and up to date. With SafetyCulture (iAuditor), you can schedule your inspections monthly and easily identify and track faulty extinguishers for immediate replacement. More fire extinguisher checklists and safety tips can be found here.
Office First Aid Kit Checklist
First aid is given as initial treatment to office workers who suffer from injury. Adequate first aid kit supply is needed to support each employee in case of an emergency. Use this template to maintain sufficiency of first aid kit contents and to check defective items and expired solutions. Use SafetyCulture (iAuditor) to capture data and assign necessary request while performing your inspection. Browse other first aid kit checklists here.
Accident Injury Checklist
An office environment is often perceived as comfy, climate-controlled, safe and hazard-free. On the contrary, there are a lot of work-related injuries and health problems associated with office work. Constantly reporting and documenting incidents is important in reducing hazards. An Accident Injury template is used to record the information of the injured person, injury details and the root cause of the accident. Emergency services and witness statements are also recorded for detailed reporting. Browse here for more incident report templates.
