How your Business can Prepare for and Deal with Health and Safety Issues

Minor accidents are a part of life and as such you are likely to come across them occasionally at your place of work. However, some accidents and health and safety breaches can be a bit more serious and require some preparation to ensure that you and your staff are as best prepared for them as possible. This preparation could literally be the difference between life and death in some situations. To make sure that you are fully ready, here is how your business can prepare for and deal with health and safety issues. 

Recognize the Different Health and Safety Issues you Might come Across

There are different types of health and safety breaches that can occur within your business that are dealt with and prepared for slightly differently. Therefore, it is important that you identify these and develop strategies for handling all situations. The first and most basic thing you can do, for instance, is to identify and remove preventable hazards from your workplace. This might include ensuring that walkways are clear and plug points are not overloaded with electrical items. Next, recognize any accidents and work-related health conditions your employees could potentially experience, such as back problems from lifting heavy objects and eye strain from extended screen use. Finally, be prepared for emergency situations that might require the safe and speedy evacuation of your premises, such as a fire or hijacking by individuals with malicious intent. 

Build a Well-stocked First Aid Kit

As well as patching up those who have sustained minor injuries like paper cuts, a first aid kit could potentially provide life-saving preventative treatment before the arrival of the emergency services. It is important, therefore, that you ensure that your first aid kit is well-stocked at all times with a variety of medical items to help you prepare for all eventualities. As well as obvious items like bandages, antiseptic solution,s and pain-relieving tablets, make sure to also invest in larger pieces of medical equipment. For instance, a space blanket can help to insulate and prevent pneumonia from developing in people who have been injured outside and during lengthy outside evacuations. An eye-wash station can help prevent extensive damage to the eyes. A defibrillator can administer life-saving treatment to those in cardiac arrest while waiting for the emergency services to arrive. A stretcher can be used to safely maneuver those who have difficulty walking for further treatment. Visit rapid-rescue.com.au/basket-stretchers/ for more information about medical equipment to include in your first aid kit. 

Develop Strategies for Preventing Work-Related Health Conditions

Work-related health conditions can ruin lives, as well as proving costly for your company in terms of a negative reputation and paying out large sums of compensation. It is therefore important that you develop strategies for protecting your employees from work-related health conditions. In an industrial environment, provide employees with sufficient PPE, such as safety eyewear and ear protection to prevent eye damage and hearing loss from noisy heavy machinery.

Create a process for employees to follow when lifting heavy objects to help prevent back injuries. In an office environment, try to limit the amount of time spent working on a screen at one time by encouraging regular breaks to prevent eye strain. It is also not just physical injuries that you should be prepared for: work-related stress can affect people in all industries at all levels of their career – when a person feels overwhelmed and unable to cope with their daily tasks. To help prevent your employees from developing work-related stress, keep an eye on workloads to ensure that no one becomes overburdened and encourage regular working hours and a work-life balance. As there unfortunately remains a certain stigma around mental health issues, ensure that your workplace has an open, non-judgmental atmosphere in which your employees feel safe to open up about any mental health struggles they may be going through. 

Regularly Practise Evacuation 

There are several scenarios in which your workplace might have to be evacuated quickly and safely. The most obvious example is in the event of a fire; however, you should also be prepared in case your business is attacked by malicious individuals with intent to harm. Ensure that there are easily accessible emergency exits and that all walkways are kept clear of obstructions. You should also install fire doors for additional protection and perhaps even a safe room if your business is situated in a high-risk area. Practise your evacuation procedure at least once every six months. Doing this will ensure that employees know exactly what to do if such situations do occur, helping to reduce panic and increase preparedness. 

Provide Health and Safety Training to all Employees

It is important to remain calm in emergency situations, as panic only leads to mistakes and an increased reaction time. As a lot of panic results from a feeling of helplessness and not knowing what to do, it is important that you prepare your employees as much as possible for emergency situations by providing them with health and safety training. At the very least, your employees should receive training on health and safety in the workplace, so that they can identify and prevent any common hazards such as overloaded plug sockets. First aid training is also invaluable: delegates learn life-saving skills that can be used in any emergency situation they might come across, both in the workplace and on the street. There are also additional fire safety courses in which your employees will learn what to do in the event of a fire and how to evacuate a building safely. Health and safety training courses are often available at several levels, giving people the opportunity to develop their basic skills if they wish. You might decide to appoint a few keen individuals who can keep calm under pressure as health and safety representatives for your business, providing them with more in-depth training so that they become leaders for your business as a whole in the event of emergency situations.