The work environment can be a dangerous place if you’re not careful, especially when you’re in charge of looking after employees, and there are many people within one building or office space. There are ways that you can help improve the safety, not just of the work environment itself but also the actions of your staff and how they go about looking after themselves. Here are seven tips for improving safety within the workplace.
Take Regular Breaks
Regular breaks are hard to come by when it comes to many businesses. Often enough, employees will work through their lunch breaks if they are too busy and not many office workers will step away from their desk often enough in order to stretch the legs and give their eyes a break. Taking a break is important because if your staff is simply working through the day without stopping, they’re going to physically and emotionally find that hard to do. No one has the ability to be fully focused for several hours a day, and if you’re not promoting or encouraging regular break times, they could end up injuring themselves in some way. That’s not something that you want to put your employees through as that’s going to affect their love of the job and how they cope with the daily tasks that are laid out for them in the workplace.
To encourage safety within the workplace, your staff should be taking a proper lunch break and having their lunch away from the working area so that they can recharge their batteries ready for the afternoon. When it comes to regular breaks, a quick ten minutes here and there can be crucial for their health, so make sure it happens.
Have Safety Procedures For Hazards
Safety procedures and preventative measures are put in place so that your staff isn’t at risk when they step into the workplace. The work environment should be a safe one, so from the security that you have at the entrance of the building to the layout of your working floor, everything should be safe to use and operate. You can certainly put in safety procedures for those areas where hazards might occur simply by accident, or they’re dangerous to use or operate, for example. For those instances, it’s worth having plans in place and proper training for the staff themselves. You should also look at reaching out to those companies or individuals that can handle the process of safety procedures for hazardous materials or equipment. There are hazmat incident emergency service specialists that can help you, so why not reach out to them if needed?
Declutter The Workspaces
In order to help with safety around the workplace, making sure your spaces are clean and tidy can really help. Decluttering your workspaces is definitely needed because even after just a few weeks, desks can get cluttered with paperwork, and you might find that any storage space can quickly get taken up with various bits and pieces. It’s worth giving the spaces a bit of a declutter every now and then, perhaps separating it into teams so that everyone has an equal responsibility when it comes to their own workspaces. Having the right cleaners, of course, is necessary, but you can definitely find a lot of benefits by simply doing a spring clean of your business premises every now and then. Keeping on top of it is better than having it be something that overruns the workspace and makes it uncomfortable for people to work in. It’s also important for when you’re trying to practice good first impressions with new clients or customers.
Train Your Employees
Your employees bear a certain responsibility to their own safety and that of others, however, you should be providing them with some basic training where possible. There’s first aid training, which is worth dishing out to various members of the business so that you have a good number of first aiders within the building at any one point. Explore the options that are out there when it comes to training your employees as there’s definitely a lot that you can do as a business to make sure your staff knows how to practice safety in the workplace. Specific equipment might also need training in order to use it safely and securely. It’s better than simply letting your staff go about their day and potentially causing injury to someone else or to themselves. It could be risky for you as a business to have let it happen if it could have been something that was avoidable.
Maintain Records
Maintaining records is essential because it’s good to have an updated log of whenever injuries happen. There are going to be times where even the smallest of injuries occur, but it’s all-important to get it noted down as evidence that it happened and that your staff also have a record of it that they either keep themselves if needed, or it’s available for them to view at any point. Not adding records to the accident log could result in legal action being taken by a staff member if they feel they have a case against you. There’s nothing stopping an employee getting injured and then saying that injury occurred. Always have someone responsible for maintaining the records and ensure that they are stored somewhere safe and secure.
Do Regular Building Checks
Regular building checks are necessary because you can’t always be aware of every potential danger or hazard within the workplace. In order to keep a safe environment, your buildings team needs to be on the ball when it comes to regular building checks. It can be something that can be done on a shift in order to keep an eye on what’s going on around the building. You could keep a log of who visited what areas and whether anything was reported at the time. It’s all needed in order to protect the company’s back, should anything happen. It should be evident that everything possible was done to prevent a danger or accident from occurring.
Ask Staff To Be Alert
And finally, if you need eyes and ears everywhere, your staff are the perfect opportunity to help you find occasions where there might be dangers or hazards. Always ask your staff to keep you informed of anything that they might see when they’re walking around the building but also in their working area. If there’s anything out of place or that might cause risk to them or others, you should have a policy that everything is reported properly and in the right manner. Unity in the workplace is important, and it can help for you as a business to have your staff on the lookout for anything that might not be right, and that might need investigating further.
Maintain and Update Equipment Regularly
No matter what equipment you use in your workplace, it could pose a risk to employees if it is not properly maintained. Even something as benign as a computer can put people’s privacy at risk if its cybersecurity is not up to scratch. Health and safety problems can easily be kept at bay if you pay close attention to any risks your equipment could pose to an employee or visitor of your company.
If you work in a manufacturing environment, the safety of your machinery and equipment is of the utmost importance. A malfunctioning or badly maintained piece of factory or transportation can easily injure, or in tragic circumstances kill, an employee.
One way to easily update the safety of your equipment is to have custom-made production equipment installed using CNC milling services. This will allow you to make your manufacturing process both more efficient and less hazardous to workers.
Improving the safety of your business premises is essential, not only for your staff but for also any external guests that visit the building. You want to make sure you’ve done everything you can as a business to keep people protected and that you are covering your company’s back, should anything happen that could resort in legal action of any kind. Look at how you could improve the health and safety of your own workplace and where there might be certain weaknesses that need improving. Keeping your staff safe in the workplace is essential so always be active in providing that safety and security to them whenever they’re in the building and under your responsibility.
