Proper safety and health in any work setting are crucial. Aside from being a requirement as set by the law, it is also part of your responsibility as an employer. You want to ensure that your staff is working in a setting where they won’t constantly fear for their safety. The last thing they’d want is to end up getting injured while working for you.
Aside from making sure that your staff and workers are properly protected, you also need to ensure workplace safety for your customers, visitors, sub-contractors, business partners, and the rest of the public who may do business with you, work with you, or get involved with your organization.
Why Bad Workplace Safety and Health is Bad for You
Every year, millions of workdays are lost due to injury and illnesses in the workplace. Death due to occupational illnesses and hazards are also by the thousand. While work-related injuries and illnesses can impact your worker’s quality of life, this can have a huge effect on your business as well. For instance, this can affect your productivity and can even tarnish your reputation. A damaged reputation is usually harder to get over from and may even be reason enough for your business to go under if you’re not careful.
Promoting Safety and Good Health at Work
It’s tedious having to deal with safety and health concerns at work. Sure, it might involve a lot of form filling but at the end of the day, it has to be done to ensure that your workers and your business are in the best position productivity-wise. Here are some things you can implement to ensure that:
Have a policy in writing.
It’s always good to have your safety and health policy in written form to allow proper risk assessment of your operations. At the same time, it’s most useful at ensuring that proper controls are put in once you’ve successfully identified what possible risks are present in your work environment. The policy also needs to determine the one responsible for the safety and health of the organization. At the same time, it must also specific ways to mitigate, if not eliminate these risks. Also, see to it that the policy gets a yearly review to keep it up to date with the times.
Implement a safety training program.
All your staff should undergo proper training in safety and health. In fact, it would be best to incorporate the training they have to undergo the moment they are accepted in your company so they are already well aware of how to do things the safe way the moment they join in. Refresher training programs should also be conducted especially when new safety policies are out in place just to make sure that everybody is on the same page.
Invest in the right equipment.
Having a working policy to promote health and safety in your workplace is already a huge move. But you can take it a bit farther by actually putting in place the necessary tools and equipment to cement your efforts. See to it that your workers have the right tools to do their job safely and efficiently. If they are expected to operate certain machinery, see to it that they have undergone proper training to ensure that safety protocols are followed. Injuries and accidents are greatly reduced when people are well aware of the safe and proper way of doing things.