Globally it has been estimated that the costs of poor safety at work adds to an estimated 1.25 thousand million US dollars every year. And global, deaths linked to work places amounts to some two million people yearly.

For American businesses it’s been estimated, for every dollar outlaid in workplace safety programs, they get three back – a safety culture at work pays big dividends.

When it comes to improving safe work practices, there is a methodology of surveying hazards, reducing identified hot spot risks and then training and managing for the irreducible exposure . Safety signs slot into this latter task as the ever vigilant reminders of appropriate work practices. Safety signs by themselves don’t make a safe work place – they just reinforce all the other actions

As one might imagine, warning signs have been made to cover thousand’s of different situations and have consequently been organized into functional groups . In order of least to most severe, the safety sign groups are Notice, Stop, Caution, and Danger.

As our desire is to gain the biggest impact improving on safety, we’ll just review the Danger and Caution hazard signs here. 

A caution sign’s role is to advise of conditions not life threatening, but which, could be a risk to human health and/or the environment. Caution signs have a yellow background with a black print for contrast and improved visibility.

As a way of obtaining worker’s attention, the caution sign has effect .

The danger sign means just that; a threat to life exists and failure to observe this sign will have serious consequences: perhaps even death. These signs are limited to the most extreme hot spots and are often discovered in manufacturing – industrial situations, where chemicals, heavy machinery and similar industrial hazards are prevalent.

Knowing the returns on safety investments, safety signs and their content act to make workplaces safe.