6 Ways To Make Your Workplace Safer
As companies grow and expand, they must keep up with their employee’s needs. Workplace safety is an important part of this.
Workplace Safety is important because it helps keep employees happy, healthy, and safe. This can be achieved by making sure all of your employees know what their rights are and how to deal with problems that arise in the workplace. It also means you need to have a system in place for dealing with accidents and injuries, as well as having a policy for dealing with bullying or harassment.
It is important that companies have a good system for dealing with any accidents or injuries that may happen at work, such as a first aid kit and fire extinguishers nearby so if someone does get hurt they can get the help they need quickly so there will be no lasting effects from any accidents that do occur on site.
It is also important for employers to make sure they have an action plan in place if an accident were to happen so everything runs smoothly during those times when things don’t go according to plan!
Here are the 6 ways to make your workplace safer
1. Train Your People
You can have the best safety equipment, medical supplies, and emergency systems in place to help you weather a crisis. But if your employees don’t know what to do if disaster strikes, then everything else is just window dressing. Proper employee health and safety training is essential for protecting your people and maximizing productivity.
If you’re not already doing it, now is the time to start training your employees on how to stay safe in the event of an emergency. The best way to stay safe during a crisis is to know how to react when it occurs. Knowing what steps to take allows workers to act fast without panicking or making mistakes that could lead to injury or death.
Safety training can help prevent injuries and save lives by teaching employees how to react during emergencies such as fires or explosions by evacuating buildings safely, using fire extinguishers properly, wearing protective gear when necessary, etc. Training should also cover how employees should respond if they’re injured during an emergency situation such as broken bones or burns so they know what steps need to be taken immediately following an accident before paramedics arrive on the scene (such as placing ice packs over wounds).
Employee training programs should also include instructions about handling dangerous substances safely (such as chemical spills) which may require special training depending on
2. Inspect Your Workplace
We all want to be safe at work, but sometimes we get so caught up in our own thing that we can overlook potential hazards.
When it comes to safety, it’s not just about you. It’s about your coworkers and the people who might be visiting your workplace. This means that if something isn’t safe for you, it won’t be safe for them either.
It’s easy to get too focused on what you’re doing that you forget about potential hazards around you. That’s why it’s important to inspect your workplace regularly for hazards—and why you should keep a record of the results of your inspections. It’s easy to forget what you’ve looked for in the past or what needs to be inspected next time around, so keeping a list and a schedule will help you stay on track.
3. Investigate Incidents
An incident is any situation where someone has been hurt or put at risk of being hurt. You may also hear it called a hazard or accident. When incidents occur in the workplace, you need to be prepared to investigate them. It’s important to have a plan in place so you can make your workplace safer and accident-free.
You should investigate any incident that causes injury or property damage, involves a near miss (someone nearly gets hurt but doesn’t), or could have resulted in an injury if the right steps hadn’t been taken. The reason for investigating incidents is simple—to keep them from happening again! The more information you gather about an incident, the better able you’ll be to identify what went wrong and how to prevent it from happening again.
In most cases, the person who reports an incident should investigate what happened. But sometimes it makes sense for someone else on your team to take over if they’re more experienced or qualified than your original investigator was (for example, if you’re a manager and someone reports an injury). That person should still talk to the original investigator first before starting their own investigation though!
4. Maintain Records
Inspections and certificates don’t mean much if you don’t keep track of them. Implement a tracking system so you have a 360-degree view of all safety-related matters at any point in time.
It’s easy to lose track of your safety documentation, but it’s important that you don’t. You need to know where everything is at all times. If something goes wrong and you need to pull up an inspection report or proof of certification, you shouldn’t have to look through piles of paperwork in order to find what you’re looking for.
The best way to keep track of all your safety documents is through an online document management system (DMS). You can store everything from OSHA-approved training records to safety certifications and even photos of the facility on this platform—and then access it whenever you need it.
5. Have A Health And Safety Plan In Place
Have a health and safety plan in place for your workplace, and make sure your people know about it. You might think that you’re too small to need one but trust us: every workplace has its hazards, so know yours and think about what should happen in an emergency. Write it down and make sure your people know about the plan.
Think about your business as a whole: what could go wrong? What is the worst-case scenario of that? What would happen if it did go wrong? How would you respond? These are all important questions to ask yourself when creating a health and safety plan.
Remember, if something bad happens in your business, you will have to be able to prove that you took measures to prevent it from happening—and that you informed people who worked there of those precautions. A good safety plan will help with this!
6. Check Your Equipment
If your workers require personal protective equipment (PPE) then it is vital their kit is checked for safety and reliability. Many PPE manufacturers now make it easy to track inspections via industry-standard platforms such as Papertrail.
You can do this by creating a checklist and assigning it to each worker, who will then carry out the inspection and enter their results into the system. This will allow you to see at a glance whether all your equipment is in good condition, while also providing data that can help you identify any problems with specific items.
You may wish to create separate checklists for different types of PPE, such as hard hats or breathing masks, so that workers can focus on what they need to do without worrying about other things like how many pairs of gloves are missing from the supply room.
