“Your number one customer is your people. Look after employees’ workplace safety first and then customers last.” – Ian Hutchinson, author of People Glue on Workplace safety.
Employees are the lifelines of any organization. They work rigorously day and night, to ensure the smooth functioning and well-being of the firm. Therefore, it becomes crucial to take the utmost care of the employee’s health and safety. After all, who wouldn’t want to work for a firm that fosters a home-like environment?
It makes complete sense if a company takes extra care and ensures that it creates a safe and healthy workplace that is at par with the regulations and standards as well.
The firm takes care of its employees, and voila! the employees give their best to the firm. Not just this, workplace safety has several other benefits such as staff retention, productivity maximization, reduced sick leave and absenteeism, reduced injury costs, and worker’s compensation due to injury.
So, it is extremely important to prioritize workplace safety and make sure that all your employees go home looking and feeling as great as when they started the day.
Here are some tips which help in ensuring workplace safety:
Providing employees with first aid training is a pragmatic way to deal with emergencies and also goes a long way towards ensuring safety for all. There should be a fully stocked first aid kit that has all the medicines and supplies required to handle the most commonly encountered situations in the office. Before these, some other things need to be taken care of such as undertaking a professional workplace risk assessment. This would be extremely useful in identifying all the potential risks that lurk in any workplace. Once that is done right, one can go on and take all the necessary precautions such as putting appropriate signs throughout the workplace.
This is the most important step towards workplace safety.
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Ensure proper training for handling materials and equipment.
All the employees who are tasked to handle tools, equipment, or machines should be provided with proper training first. Only the employees who are trained should never be assigned to handle heavy machinery. Apart from these for handling dangerous goods. This is an extremely good step for workplace safety.
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Label designated hazardous zone
The companies should ensure that walkways are highlighted with necessary signage.
And also, the areas where dangerous equipment is stored should be clearly labeled. The hazardous zones should be marked with tape or black and white stripes painted on the floor. This helps avoid accidents that may cause serious injuries
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Have an ergonomic workplace
The company should put ergonomically designed furniture and equipment in the workplace. If they rearrange the work area and ensure that everything is within easy reach, it would prevent things from falling.
Coming to offices, the setup of the workstation should be in a manner that suits the employees. This would include a perfectly working computer, well designed furniture and enough lighting to work well.
- Other tips could be to provide clothes which are appropriate for tasks, storage of combustible material in a safe and careful manner and also making sure that the employees are aware and understand the risks in the workplace.