According to the Health and Safety Executive, 693,000 people sustained an injury at work in 2019/20, with 142 workers sadly losing their lives. As such, improving workplace safety is paramount as businesses reopen – and especially as workplaces take to hiring new and less experienced staff in the midst of the UK’s labour crunch.
With all this in mind, how can businesses increase workplace safety and ensure the health, wellbeing, and productivity of their workforces?
Place relevant safety signs around the workplace
Ensuring that your workforce understands where they can and cannot be, and what they can and cannot do, is a crucial part of keeping a workplace safe and orderly. The best and simplest way to do this is to utilise safety signs, which can communicate all manner of messages to staff, visitors, and the general public.
For example, prohibition signs are essential for workplaces and public areas that are covered by health and safety orders. Each sign features a red circle around an icon showing the banned activity, plus clear text instructions, and work the same way as the design of road signs (circle for order and triangle for warning).
Implement regular training
From fire drills to first aid, training is a crucial part of workplace safety. All staff, new and experienced, should be given mandatory training sessions on safety practices relating to both their own roles, and safely operating around the workplace more generally, and these should be repeated every year or so. Taking training further, assessments are a good way of ensuring employees take the learnings on board and use them in their day-to-day work.
Besides, every state in the USA has its own rules and regulations that need to be followed. For example, employers in California need to be aware of not only just federal OSHA regulations but also need to understand their rights and responsibilities under the state. That’s why they need to enroll their employees in a California OSHA training course to make sure they’re following all the right regulations.
Keep spaces tidy
The easiest way to invite injury into your workplace is keeping the space unclean. If the workplace is strewn with rubbish, boxes, production materials, and wires, then the likelihood of someone tripping and falling is much higher.
To prevent this from happening, clean the workplace on a daily basis and assign storage areas that themselves are properly organised. Then, once these systems are in place, design and implement training so all employees know what their responsibilities are regarding workplace tidiness, and enforce rules through management.
Install CCTV and intruder alarms
Not all workplace safety is related to the actions of staff. Particularly in dangerous or private workplaces, it’s crucial to keep non-workers out of the premises, otherwise accidents or thefts can occur. To prevent people from entering your workplace, install a CCTV system that adequately covers all entrances and interior areas of the property, and install intruder alarms on all exterior doors. Be sure to provide training to senior staff on how to prime and turn off these systems too.
What do you think is crucial to ensuring workplace safety? Let us know in the comments section.