Most of us walk into the office every morning thinking about coffee, deadlines and whether we can get away with wearing the same outfit two days in a row. We don’t walk into the office wondering if the building is actually safe for us to be there. But safety really does matter, even if it’s not as exciting as the office gossip or the mystery of who keeps stealing everyone’s pens. Does your building manager keep up with the central things like that fire alarm service every year? Businesses love to talk about productivity and teamwork, but safety doesn’t seem to come up as often. You can’t have a company culture or productivity levels being monitored if your building can’t keep you safe. Safety isn’t glamorous, but it does keep the lights on.
A safe office starts with the basics. You need clear exit, working alarms, proper ventilation, and electrical systems that aren’t older than half your staff. If your workplace looks like it hasn’t been updated since the 90s, that’s charming until a fuse blows. And while we’re on the subject, emergency lighting should actually turn on when the power goes out. If half the lights flicker like a haunted house, that’s your sign to raise an eyebrow.
When you’re thinking about the safety of your workplace, you need to think about the layout. We all love a good open floor plan until we realise that in an emergency, getting to the exit might require Olympic level agility. Desks, plants, stray boxes and that one chair with a mysteriously broken wheel can turn into a real life obstacle course real quick. Keeping pathways clear isn’t just about tidiness, but necessity.
Speaking of obstacles, let’s talk about cables. When was the last time your IT team looked through the jungle of tangled wires and decided to tidy them up? A single trip incident could send someone flying, and cable management might not be fun, but neither is filling out an accident report.
It’s also worth mentioning that when it comes to safety, you need to look beyond the cables and the obstacles and look at air quality. If the office air feels heavier than your workload, sluggish, cranky employees are the result. Something is off, and that means that you need to do more with your ventilation systems.
It’s worth a mention that staff training is another big part of staying safe in your office. Nobody wants to attend the fire drill or the safety briefings, but you’ll be grateful that you did. If something ever goes wrong, knowing where to go and what to do is important. It’s the one meeting where everyone gets to go outside. Think of it as a free break.
Finally, let’s talk about responsibility. Safety isn’t just something you do once it’s ongoing, and it’s something that everybody needs to be involved with to keep everybody else safe. Is your office building safe? If you paused even for a second, it might be time to find out and run an audit.
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