Your goal as a business owner is to ensure all project deadlines are met in a fast-paced working environment. This usually happens at the expense of observing the required safety protocols to safeguard your well-being and your staff. However, this shouldn’t be the case. Instead, you need to prioritize creating workplace safety because this will make your employees happier and healthier.
Workplace Safety Tips
If you’re looking for some of the best workplace safety tips to keep your employees safe, then you’ve found the right place. This article will give you a few pointers that will help you and your staff stay safe while performing your daily duties.
1. Practice Good Housekeeping
One effective approach to preventing accidents in the workplace is making sure that it’s always clean and organized. If you choose to ignore such a simple housekeeping measure, then the chances of fire incidents, illnesses, or injuries increase drastically. And, this doesn’t come as a surprise when you consider that many of the falls, slips, and trips in the workplace get traced back to poor housekeeping.
To alleviate your workers’ chances of getting exposed to such risks, you need to consider investing in an electronic locker system. Having such a system guarantees the cleanliness of the work environment since your staff can place any valuables in these lockers and keep their workspaces clean and organized.
Observing good housekeeping practices also means disposing of unwanted items, such as empty shipping boxes or broken equipment. To ensure the cleaning standards are followed, put in place a routine cleaning program. To execute that routine, get yourself good commercial cleaning equipment from Powr-Flite. With a system in place, you can be sure that your workplace will be tidy and organized, hence, lowering the risk of work-related accidents.
2. Practice Emergency Drills
While you might not wish for a workplace emergency, it’s best to prepare and practice for one. Emergency drills allow you to gauge whether your employees understand the safety protocols to follow in the event of an emergency. As part of this emergency drill, have a system in place to account for each employee.
Ideally, you need to conduct emergency safety drills once or twice each year. It’s only through such practices that you and your staff can clearly understand your duties when an emergency happens. Without this practice, everyone in your business will only panic when an emergency occurs, not knowing what needs to be done. Thus, there’ll be a higher number of injuries due to a lack of a plan.
3. Put Up Safety Signs
An effective yet simple way of improving your safety and that of your workers is by putting up safety signs. Invest in safety signs alerting temporary hazards, such as slippery floors, and permanent hazards like sharp tools. Having safety signs in a certain area makes your employees a lot more cautious, which considerably lowers the chances of an accident.
There are three categories of workplace safety signs. These include:
- Regulatory signs: These signs usually state the actions or measures as required by law, and include mandatory, restriction, and prohibition signs.
- Hazard safety signs: Such signs inform of possible hazards and dangers that might result in severe injuries or death.
- Emergency information signs: These signs include details on emergency facilities, including fire equipment, exits, protective gear, and first aid kits.
The most common areas safety signs should be placed are hallways, areas with hazardous equipment, fire doors, and any
other spot with possible workplace hazards. It’s also important for these signs to be easily noticeable to your visitors and workers or their effectiveness will be moot.
4. Carry Out Risk Assessment
As an employer, your goal is to reduce the chances of an accident even before it occurs. An effective technique of achieving this is by carrying out a risk assessment. For this assessment to be effective, consider using the cross-border risk assessment technique. This involves having your employees from one department assess the safety protocols put in place by those in a different department.
The cross-border risk assessment is a great method since fresh eyes see things differently. This increases the likelihood of pointing out a possible safety concern that wouldn’t have been clear to employees working in that department.
5. Endorse A Safety Culture
It’s your duty to emphasize the need to observe safety measures while in the workplace. Organize orientations that train your staff to observe proper safety in the workplace. Over time you’ll notice that they’ll start observing the safety protocols and ensuring a safe work environment. Doing this also makes your staff feel free to open up to you about the workplace’s possible dangers.
6. Train Your Workers On The Safety Protocols
Another essential safety measure you need to implement is training your workers on safety procedures. This training should be done according to each employee’s job description. It usually includes training on dangerous items in the workplace or the correct lifting techniques. Ensure each of your staff is well-trained on these safety protocols before they do their duties.
Once all your staff members know the safety rules, only then can you hold them accountable should they violate any procedure. Make sure to post these rules across different parts of the company. This will ensure your employees are constantly updated on what they should do.
You should also periodically carry out refresher training to ensure everyone remembers the safety rules and procedures.
Recap of Six Workplace Safety Tips to Consider
No matter how big or small it is, every company should implement workplace safety measures. This is vital. Even though this might cost your business money, it ensures you and your employees remain safe and healthy.
