6 Things You Must Do to Keep Your Employees Safe in the Workplace

As their employer, you have a responsibility to keep your employees safe whenever they spend time in your working environment. Failing to perform this crucial task could put you in serious danger of having a liability lawsuit filed against you and, more importantly, it could result in a member of your staff falling seriously ill or picking up a nasty injury while they are at work.

Do you want to do your utmost best to keep your employees safe in the workplace? Here are six things that you must do to carry out this all-important task:

Identify Risks

Knowing what dangers you are up against will give you the upper hand with regard to preventing them, which is why you should take some time to identify the risks and hazards in your workspace.

To perform a workplace risk inspection in the most thorough way possible, you should:

• Inspect ALL activities that take place within the working environment (including non-routine tasks like cleaning and maintenance) and study how they are performed throughout their entire lifecycle
• Test your equipment on a regular basis
• Take a look through the injury, accident and incident book to see what dangers have arisen in the past
• Consider the different levels of risk that are attached to certain members of your workforce (wheelchair users, for example, will face their own distinct set of hazards and challenges whenever they enter your workspace)

Take Fire Safety Incredibly Seriously

No matter what type of business you run or what kind of workspace you operate in, a fire alarm systems safety is something that you must take incredibly seriously. To protect yourself, your workforce, and any members of the public that you invite to your work space against this life-threatening danger, it’s crucial that you conduct an annual Fire Risk Assessment. This will allow you to keep on top of all the specific hazards within your workplace that could spark a blaze and, in turn, this will help you to make necessary changes to your fire safety protocol to ensure that it meets current legislations.

De-Clutter Your Work Environment

Unnecessary safety hazards can and will arise within your work environment if you fail to keep the space clear and clutter-free. Allowing objects to remain scattered across your floor, for example, will increase the likelihood of slip and fall accidents taking place on your premises.

If you want to avoid a serious liability claim being made against you, you need to put the following de-cluttering advice into practice:

• Designate a space for both incoming items (mail, packages, deliveries, etc.) and outgoing items (products that you are packing up and sending off to customers, for instance)
• Go paper free and switch to digital documentation
• Take full advantage of all the shelves, bookcases and drawers in your workspace
• Adopt a no-storage policy in the public area of your workspace
• Make sure that the workspace is tidied up at the end of each shift and that a deep clean is performed at least once a week

Teach Awareness

Teaching your staff members all about avoiding danger in your workspace is one of the best things that you can do to keep them safe. Once they know how to steer clear of the many hazards that are dotted around your working environment, you won’t have to spend as much time policing them with regard to their workplace wellbeing.

At least once a year, you should have your entire workforce undergo a comprehensive safety training exercise. Some of the areas that you should cover in your annual training sessions include:

• Workplace orientation
• Emergency procedures
• First aid
• Accident reporting procedure
• Use of workplace equipment
• PPE (personal protective equipment) maintenance

Invest In The Right Safety Equipment

The importance of having the right safety equipment at hand in your workspace can never be understated. Equipping your workforce with the exact tools they need to perform their daily tasks safely will not only help them to avoid dangers in the first instance, but it’ll also allow them to deal with problems in the most effective way possible before they escalate further.

The safety equipment that you invest in will depend on the exact hazards that you face in your workspace. If you run a manufacturing business and operate out of a warehouse, for example, you will need to provide your employees with protective equipment such as helmets, goggles, and safety boots. If you work out of a traditional office environment, on the other hand, you won’t need to invest in this type of heavy-duty protective equipment but, at the very least, you will need to ensure that there is a first aid kit on you premises.

To ensure that your first aid kit meets standard health and safety regulations, the following items should be included in it:

• Band-aids in a variety of different shapes and sizes
• Compression plasters and bandages
• Sterile gauze dressings
• Both antiseptic and antibacterial cream
• Burn treatment
• CPR breathing apparatus
• Scissors and tweezers
• Heat pads/cold packs
• Alcohol-free cleansing pads
• A digital thermometer
• Hydrocortisone rash cream
• Pain relief (make sure to include paracetamol and non-aspirin ibuprofen)
• Gloves that are made of both latex and silicone

Lead by Example

If you want your workforce to operate in a highly safe and conscious manner at all times, you need to showcase this same level of sensibility yourself. Your employees will look to you for guidance whenever they are unsure about how to act in your work environment, which is why you can’t afford to let your standards slip on a personal level. Let your workers know exactly what it is you expect from them when it comes to workplace safety by leading by example, and soon enough everybody will start to operate in a much more cautious manner.

Are you determined to protect your employees from all the dangers that could potentially befall them in your place of work? If you want to do the right thing by your workforce in this sense, then be sure to put all of the above advice into practice.