The Risks And Rewards Of Ensuring Your Workforce Is Safe And Healthy

Five Easy Ways To Improve Safety At Your Workplace-Chispa MagazineHaving a real focus on the health and safety of those in your business, whether they’re employees, customers, or visitors, is not a choice you can make. If you don’t want to find the company crippled by legal fees and healthcare costs, it is a necessity. Injury, accident, and illness, are some of the most common causes of legal trouble for all businesses. You need to make sure you have a real strategy to make sure they’re not going to overwhelm the business.

Assess the risks. As we go on, we’re going to talk about some of the more general risks of a workplace and how you can take the right steps to tackle them. However, every office, every construction site, and every factory is going to have individual risks. When it comes to individual sources of potential fire and electric damage, then you need to carry out a proper risk assessment. Only when those sources can be identified can you be sure that any safety strategies you implement in future are addressing all the problems of the workplace. Not just the problems that you can perceive at the moment. Risk assessments are also vital in any situation where people have any chance of prolonged contact with any sort of hazardous materials or environments.

Create a healthier workplace. Even if there are no immediate hazards that you have to worry about in the workplace, you should take a closer look at how both the environment and the workload can negatively affect someone’s health. For instance, looking at the environment, any new property needs to be thoroughly checked for materials like asbestos and lead paint. Just as they should be insulated to reduce the risk of mold and damp forming and affecting the respiratory health of the team. Then you need to look at actual working conditions, too. Repetitive tasks and poor posture are both risk factors of repetitive strain injury that could be caused by either using the same pneumatic tool for too long or sitting down at a computer all day.

Keep them on their feet. Despite the broad variety of risks, the most common injury in the workplace is still the classic slip, trip, or fall. Most of us will experience one of these at some point in our lives, so it’s easy to underestimate how dangerous these can be. Yet, many people work from heights or work in environments with lots of equipment which could potentially do grievous harm to their body. That’s why you should ensure that you do as much as you can to prevent falls in your workplace. Be strict in regards to setting boundaries for where materials can and can’t be stored. Make sure floors are cleaned of messes immediately and signified if they are wet. If you have surfaces that often get wet, then consider using more absorbent materials and anti-skid tape.

When dealing with hazardous materials. We need to focus more on spreading awareness outside of the regular office setting, too. There are a lot of jobs that involve handling hazardous materials, for instance. As we stated, a risk assessment can help you get a better idea of just how much exposure to these materials is acceptable. But you can also do a great deal to reduce the amount of contact between your workers and those materials. For instance, companies like CL Smith stock hazardous material containers not just for packaging purposes, but also so that employees can handle them a lot more safely. Teaching thorough washing practices and having the right protective gear is just as important.

Think mental, not just physical. You might think your job is done at having made all the proper provisions for someone’s physical health. However, employers can be found just as responsible if they failed to act or even had a hand in the event of an employee’s worsening mental condition. Unsurprisingly, stress is one of the most common emotional health issues found in the workplace. As they employer, there is a lot you can do to make it more manageable, too. For instance, you can privately address your concerns with your team member and see if their current workload is too much for them, or is involving them in any tasks they are unable to cope with. Encourage breaks and lead by example so they see it really is alright to take some time to themselves if they need it.

Talk well-being. When it comes to the aspects of lifestyle that impacts well-being, you can force anyone to follow your advice. What you can do, however, is talk about the risks with them and the strategies you can employ to reduce them. It’s a good idea to take a health and safety topic a week to discuss. This can range from falls, fire safety, and stress directly related to the workplace. However, it can also include health aspects outside the workplace like obesity and exercise. You might be able to offer them resources or the flexibility they need to better tackle these issues. You just have to talk about it more often to find out.

Get them involved. Having them there for health and safety briefings is essential. They may very well be able to spot risks you haven’t considered yet, helping you get compliant. If someone in the business seems particularly focused on health and safety and has a knack for spotting risks, why not make use of that? With some training and delegating of some of their previous duties, you could turn your employee into a health & safety officer. This means you can rest assured you always have someone checking out the details to let you know whether or not you’re compliant. Not only does it keep you on the right side of the law, but it shows your employees you take their well-being seriously.

You need to prepare the workplace, you need to prepare the right tools, and you need to prepare your people. Health and safety needs to be a topic of communication often, lest it’s forgotten only until it becomes a more serious and urgent issue.

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Mia Guerra

Mia Guerra

Executive Editor at Chispa Magazine
Executive Editor at Chispa Magazine, Mia Guerra is a writer at heart. Regardless the topic, she loves to investigate, encourage, and ruminate on topics that can make us better people. Aiming to live a Proverbs 31 life, Mia is ecstatic to be following her calling with Chispa. At home she is her husband's sidekick and together they are raising a God-fearing family in Atlanta.

Mia Guerra

Executive Editor at Chispa Magazine, Mia Guerra is a writer at heart. Regardless the topic, she loves to investigate, encourage, and ruminate on topics that can make us better people. Aiming to live a Proverbs 31 life, Mia is ecstatic to be following her calling with Chispa. At home she is her husband's sidekick and together they are raising a God-fearing family in Atlanta.