Whether or not your employees have grappled with the cost of injuries before, you need to take the right steps to improve the safety at your work facility as soon as possible. Establishing a safer workplace is not just good for your employees; it can help you, the business owner or employer, avoid poor reputation, unnecessary employee turnover, and costly lawsuits. Here are some of the best ways to improve the safety at your work facility today.
Conduct a thorough inspection
Before changing anything in your workplace to improve safety, you need to inspect all your tools and equipment. Your goal should be to ensure they’re properly maintained and safe for use. Next, assess your storage areas while reviewing safe work procedures. Check if the boxes and other items in your storage area are stacked safely and whether you have the right mechanisms in place to assist your employees to lift heavy objects without injuring themselves. Moreover, check whether everyone knows where the fire exit is, and where they should gather during a fire outbreak.
Train your employees
Institute clearer, more accessible, and better quality training programs for your employees to learn about how to maintain proper workplace safety. You may have highly skilled or experienced employees when it comes to risky tasks such as chemical handling and forklift operation. However, even the most skilled or experienced employee needs constant training and instruction. You shouldn’t count on common sense because mistakes are inevitable no matter how smart the person is.
Provide the necessary tools
Once you train your employees, don’t expect them to take reasonable precautions without providing the right tools and equipment. A pair of steel-toed shoes or a good set of safety glasses may be enough to prevent a trauma surgery. Remember that people are usually driven toward expediency; that means that you should expect your workers to risk using the wrong tool or taking shortcuts just to complete tasks.
Similarly, you should make sure the materials you use in your facility promote safety. For instance, if you’re involved in tough manufacturing conditions, you should look for high-quality rubber products, such as the AMS 3195 Silicone Sponge to seal the relevant parts of your facility, such as metal surfaces or joints to keep them fluid-tight. By doing so, you may prevent dangerous leakages or emissions.
Establish a culture of timely reporting and a clear safety hierarchy
Try to make everyone understand the importance of reporting every single near miss, small bruises, or major injuries as soon as possible. Ideally, your goal should be to create an atmosphere of reporting. Facilities in which there are few reports are often likely to experience many serious incidents because managers often lack the basis to address safety protocols. Generally, timely reporting facilitates investigations, trend analyses, and proper legal requirements, such as worker compensation. According to a report by Mission Support Alliance, workplaces whose workers report workplace incidences on time usually experience low severity rates and overall injuries.
Besides encouraging your staff to report, provide a clear hierarchy of safety to make sure supervisors and managers are held responsible for responding to the concerns of your employees. More importantly, your employees will understand who’s accountable for which issues or departments, encouraging them to report.
Have an open dialogue
Make sure you meet regularly with your staff to discuss all pertinent issues regarding workplace safety and health. Use the opportunity to encourage them to share their ideas and thoughts on ways to improve workplace safety. If you want, you can even provide first aid training for the staff so that you prepare them to deal with some of the common emergency situations.
Maintain cleanliness
As you know, a messy facility is a source of unforeseen accidents. Tangled cords, misplaced tools, and messy floors are some of the potential dangers that you should be on the lookout for. Conduct a thorough inspection to make sure all areas of your facility are clean. Make sure there are regular cleaning and decluttering processes in your facility to keep the whole place clean and safe.
Are you ready to improve safety in your facility? If you are, then establish a culture of timely reporting and a clear safety hierarchy, provide the necessary tools, train your employees, conduct a thorough inspection, have an open dialogue, and maintain cleanliness.
