The most important thing you can do as a business owner is ensure that your employees are as safe at work as possible. This means being an advocate for health and safety and ensuring that your company coheres with all regulations.
If you don’t follow workplace health and safety procedures properly, you could end up in a lot of trouble. Once you get a reputation for being a business owner who isn’t hot on health and safety, this will stick.
To help you ensure that your workplace is as health and safety conscious as possible, here are a few things to consider.
Understand the risks
To be able to successfully, minimise risks within the workplace, you must understand them. To successfully ensure that your employees stay safe at work, you must be aware of the risks.
Spend some time in your workplace looking out for potential hazards, anything from a sharp object to a broken tile could be a danger. As well as looking yourself, ask your employees for feedback on what they would consider to be hazards.
Help your employees manage stress
Did you know that one of the most common causes of workplace accident or injury is stress? That’s because when people are stressed their sleep suffers, so they are tired at work and are unable to concentrate. This can lead to mistakes being made and accidents and injuries occurring.
You can help your employees to manage stress by ensuring that overtime is limited and that they have enough breaks. You can also offer counselling sessions for any employees who are finding it difficult to cope.
Check health and safety equipment regularly
It’s all well and good having the correct health and safety equipment, but if it isn’t checked, then it could be useless. Over time equipment wears out, so it’s important to ensure that it is regularly checked by a professional.
Items like goggles, protective clothing, and safety boots should be checked at least once every six months. As well as getting protective clothing checked, it’s also important to get fire equipment tested.
Over time, fire extinguishers and fire sprinklers can deteriorate. This means that if an emergency were to occur, they wouldn’t be able to do their job properly.
For everything, you need to know about your fire sprinkler system, check out www.ecscorrosion.com/pipe-video-inspections/. For everything, you need to know about fire extinguishers, have a look at http://www.ch.cam.ac.uk/safety/fire-safety-types-extinguisher.
Provide mechanical aids
Don’t expect employees to lift all objects themselves, as this can lead to back injuries. Instead, ensure that there are mechanical aids on offer for them to use, as this will help to prevent back injuries.
As well as providing mechanical aids, it’s also important to give your staff heavy lifting training. There are certain methods of lifting that reduce the risk of injuries, which your staff should be trained in.
As any business owner knows, health and safety is a big deal in the workplace. If an employee gets hurt at work and you don’t have the correct safeguards in place, you could be held responsible.
To ensure that your workplace health and safety is up to standard, follow the advice in this guide. If you are unsure about anything, ensure that you seek help from a professional source.
