Workplace safety is paramount not just to the health and wellbeing of employees but also in the general efficiency and productivity of the workplace. While health and safety might seem like a series of obstacles making life more difficult for managers and employees, preventing workplace accidents helps to save a huge amount of time and money every year.
In fact, health and safety doesn’t have to be difficult. It all starts with building awareness of common risks and hazards in your employees, which in turn helps to foster a culture of responsibility. With the right strategies, your company can improve safety awareness and ensure that health and safety are prioritised. In this article, we’ll share some ideas on how you can do this.
Safety Awareness Signs
One of the simplest ways to make sure all employees are aware of safety guidelines and potential hazards is through signage. You can place signs around the workplace to give clear and concise information to all employees. These signs can be found at RS, with lots of different types available for all kinds of hazards and safety information.
It’s best to place these signs in a combination of break room areas where employees spend a lot of time as well as around potential hazards themselves. Another important note is that these signs aren’t necessarily just for employees, but also for customers and other visitors in the workplace. Therefore, they should be easy for anyone to understand, even without the right training.
Health and Safety Training
Health and safety training is extremely important for all members of staff. It should be provided as standard with any training that new recruits receive when they first start their job. It should go over potential hazards, standard health and safety protocol and what to do in case of an emergency. However, new recruits aren’t the only people that should be trained in health and safety.
It’s important that everyone on the team understands the correct health and safety protocols, and training should be provided regularly to keep everyone up to date. This can also include first aid courses for team leaders and managers, ensuring that people can respond in case of an emergency. Employees should also have access to health and safety equipment such as fire extinguishers and training on how to use it.
Safety Committee Meetings
While training is the best way to establish clear safety protocols, a safety committee can also be important. Your committee can be made up of managers and employees, with people able to give their thoughts and opinions on current protocols and potential hazards. This is a good way to get feedback from staff, and also hear of any potential safety violations.
To encourage a safety-first culture throughout your organisation, making it easy to report safety violations is vital. You want your staff to feel safe at all times, and they should be able to bring concerns about how others are behaving without worrying about consequences. The safety committee can offer a way for people to anonymously provide feedback if needed.
Regular Risk Assessments
While establishing a culture that prioritises culture is great for improving safety awareness, don’t neglect the risk assessments. Aside from having safety conscious staff, you need to carry out regular checks to identify and evaluate risks around the workplace. This should include any risks to employees and staff as well as customers, and performing them regularly helps to stay on top of any changes.
When evaluating each risk, consider the impact it can have on the business and how likely it is for this risk to occur. Then, all that’s left is to find ways to minimise them. This can be done by introducing new safety protocols or changing the way the business works to make it safer.
