Is your business a safe place to work in? Unfortunately, many workplaces are potential death traps and many people’s lives are put at risk. However, some simple steps and precautions can dramatically change this situation and make your company a safer place for your employees. Below are some of the ways you can ensure that your business is safer for everyone who works there.
Provide First Aid Courses
In certain industries, there’s a greater likelihood that accidents will happen and someone can get injured. In other situations, employees could suffer from sudden illnesses, such as a stroke or a heart attack. The quicker these emergency situations are dealt with, the more you reduce the impact of these problems.
Therefore, it’s essential for your employees to learn life-saving techniques, such as CPR from recognised organisations such as the National CPR Foundation. The skills your employees learn through these types of courses could save someone’s life if the unthinkable happens while they are working for you.
Buy Proper Safety Equipment, Accessories, and Devices
A wide range of accident and emergency situations can take place in a modern business, such as a fire breaking out or other serious incidents. To give everyone in your business more peace of mind, every business owner or business decision maker should ensure that all the appropriate types of safety equipment, accessories, and devices are present in the building your employees work in.
Typical examples of equipment, accessories, and devices that should be available include fire alarms, sprinklers, first aid equipment, and fire extinguishers. Having these items readily available has the potential to reduce the damage and risks to people’s lives, which may not be the case if you don’t make these important items available.
Maintain a Clean and Tidy Workplace
Unfortunately, many different types of preventable accidents occur in workplaces all around the country, every year. Large numbers of the injuries incurred by workers are caused when people trip, slip or fall on items in the workplace and on dangerous surfaces.
In most cases, these are accidents that would not have happened if the workplace they occurred in was well-maintained and was always kept clean and tidy. However, it’s not always easy to do this, especially if your store, factory, workshop, or office is a busy place and many items are left lying around. When working in a plant or factory, there can even be issues such as large product spillages that can only be dealt with by cleaning companies such as Ideal Cleaning, who provide specialised industrial spillage recovery and waste management services (which you can learn more about at idealcleaning.co.uk).
Despite this, you as the leader of your organisation should underline the importance of keeping your workplace as tidy and uncluttered as possible because this has the potential to greatly reduce the number of injuries that take place in your company and you will avoid the costs associated with this issue.
Invest in Proper Training programs
Every business should invest in the skills and knowledge of their employees. This should cover the work they do on a day-to-day basis so that they are as efficient and as professional as possible.
As well as being able to work more effectively, the individuals who work for your company should understand the importance of health and safety and how it applies to your organisation. Once you have clear health and safety guidelines in place, there should be fewer mistakes made and there will be fewer possibilities of any workplace accidents.
Identify Potential Risks and Carry Out Regular Safety Audits
Prevention is always better than cure and this is particularly true when it comes to safety in the workplace. To prevent many of the dangerous events that could take place in your business, you should identify all the things that could go wrong in your company. Things change in a business, so you should carry out these safety audits on a regular basis.
Once you have compiled a list of the potential problems that could occur, it’s then crucial to find ways to eliminate and prevent these problems. This can be a costly exercise, but leaving things as they are is a risk you don’t want to take, especially if the worst-case scenario happens sometime in the future.
Call in the Professionals
Most companies want to get on with the work they specialise in and don’t have the resources or the knowledge required to maintain the highest health and safety standards. If this is the case in your business, you need to get some outside help.
A wide range of safety-related companies that provide consultancy and advice in this area is available. There will be a cost involved with this too, but you should view this cost as an important investment in the future of your business.
Hire a Health and Safety Officer
As a business grows, there may be more of a need for someone who specialises in the health and safety aspect of your company. This person may be required to work on a part-time or full-time basis, depending on the size of your organisation and the health and safety risks that are present in that organisation.
Storage
Certain industries use dangerous substances and equipment, such as chemicals, sharp tools and other items that have the potential to cause serious harm to anyone who comes into contact with them. These dangerous items should only be available and used at times when they are needed. In all other situations, every dangerous item in your business should be safely and securely stored away. This involves buying high-quality, safe storage products that are specially designed for this purpose.
Electrical Dangers
Without electricity, very few modern businesses would be able to operate properly. However, as well as being one of the most important resources in a business, electricity is also one of the most dangerous so it needs to be respected at all times.
Staff members should be constantly reminded to turn off electrical equipment and plug out equipment when they finish work. Regular checks should once again be carried out on a regular basis and any products and equipment with electrical defects should be maintained and fixed immediately. It’s also a good idea to get the advice of an electrician or another expert about the condition of your current fixtures and fittings that use electricity.
Protective Gear
The personal safety of staff members should be your number one concern and each of your workers should be given the proper work gear to wear, depending on the type of work they do each day. Face guards, screen guards, protective gloves, glasses, harnesses, padded clothing and fireproof accessories are just some of the different types of safety gear items that you need to supply.
Exercises and Taking Regular Breaks
Many people work in roles where they have to sit down or stand up in the same position for long periods of time or they have to look at a computer screen all day long. These working conditions can take their toll on a person’s body. Typical health problems that can occur include back pain, headaches, problems with vision, joint pain, and problems with posture.
To address these issues, you should encourage your employees to take regular breaks and to carry out some simple exercises, such as stretching or walking before they return to their work. This gives their bodies a chance to recover so that they can face their work refreshed and invigorated.
Labelling and Identifying Dangerous Items
As mentioned earlier, there are often many dangerous items and substances lying around in a workplace. These items can be dangerous if you breathe them in, drink them, or they come into contact with your skin. To ensure that this never happens, every container that contains a dangerous substance, such as a poisonous chemical, should be clearly labelled.
Maintenance of Equipment and Tools
If your business depends on specific types of equipment and tools, they probably need to be maintained at certain intervals. However, if this maintenance is not carried out when it should be carried out, it can cause all kinds of problems. Before you start using any type of second-hand or new piece of equipment, make sure you find out how often it needs to be serviced, so that it’s always working to its full potential.
Plan for the Worst-case Scenarios
The more prepared you are for a catastrophic event in your company, the faster you and other people and organisations can deal with that event. First of all, you should put in place plans to deal with all of the issues that could occur and have all of the most important emergency service phone numbers at hand. It may take time for the emergency services to arrive, so you need have a way to contain any problem and keep every employee safe until these important services arrive.
When you employ someone, it’s your responsibility to make sure that they are safe while they are working for you. Unfortunately, many business owners don’t take this advice and it becomes a costly mistake for you, your business and your employees. The good news is there are many different ways to make a business safer, including each of the workplace safety tips mentioned above.
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