Self-inspections are valuable

Whether you are a house of worship, school or nonprofit organization, you likely place great importance on workplace safety—both for the staff and volunteers who work for you, and the people who use your property on a regular basis, such as members, students or clients.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) recommends that you develop self-inspection checklists to identify potential hazards and rectify them before they cause a problem. It’s valuable to go over these checklists on an annual basis to make sure you are staying on top of any ongoing issues—and addressing any new problems that may arise.

Church Mutual’s Risk Control Team has developed a series of self-inspection safety checklists that will help prevent or reduce property, liability, theft, workers’ compensation, and vehicle losses within your organization.

These checklists start with an overview of your organization’s risk management program as a whole, asking questions about current policies, procedures and safety committees that might already be in place. This will help the leaders of your organization identify safety processes that you may be lacking.

Next, the inspection is split up by topic area, with a series of questions in each topic pertaining to safety items or inspections that should be being done. You can then answer whether each item is Satisfactory, Needs Attention, or Not Applicable. This gives you a comprehensive and condensed view of the current state of your organization’s safety program and clearly shows which areas need improvement.

Church Mutual has a number of self-inspection checklists available, including some for:

• Houses of worship
• Nonprofit and human services organizations
• Camps and conference centers
• Schools and education
• Senior living

The topics that are covered include:

• Buildings and grounds
• Playground equipment
• Vehicles
• Fire protection and prevention
• Electrical and grounding
• Examining various areas of the building
• Machinery and equipment
• Employees and volunteers
• Security
• Ergonomics
• First aid

For more safety resources, visit our website.