Health and safety are hugely important in the workplace. Protecting your employees from injury should be a number one priority. Plus, by showing employees that they are valued and protected, you can create a better team culture. Not to mention the fact that you’ll avoid prosecutions and fines from poor health and safety. Below, we explore how you can manage employee hazards in the workplace.
Identify hazards
The first step is to identify potential hazards in the workplace. Evaluate this space and search for common hazards including: slippery surfaces, trips, irregular stairs, loud noises, heights, cables and unsuitable flooring. By identifying these issues, you can either mitigate them or prepare your employees to avoid them.
Decide on precautions
Once you’ve identified the hazards in the workplace, you need to take action. Work out some precautions to mitigate the hazards. For instance, if part of the business’ work needs to be conducted at heights, try and see if some of that work can be completed on the ground. Or if there are slippery floors, try putting out signs warning employees. Ultimately, it’s about finding danger and minimising the risk.
Training
Training employees how to manage hazards is important too. By empowering your employees to learn the tools to keep themselves safe, you can increase the overall safety of the workplace. Training should occur regularly and it should be updated to include any new hazards that have been identified in the workplace.
PPE
Eventually though, an accident is unavoidable. In this situation, it’s crucial that your employees have the latest PPE to ensure that they have a lower chance of sustaining a serious injury. Try and purchase the appropriate PPE equipment and ensure that all your employees know how the use it properly.
Implement hazard prevention guidelines
Creating guidelines can help everyone in the business understand health and safety rules. Put together a list of hazard prevention guidelines and put them in a position in the office where everyone can see them and take them in frequently.
Chat to your employees
Your employees work day in day out next to hazards and will understand the business better than anyone. As such, if you want to find out the less obvious details about hazards or see if training is working, you should chat to your employees. Listen to what they have to say about the workplace and work with them to improve the overall safety.
Managing hazards in the workplace is crucial. And by identifying hazards, minimising the risk, kitting your staff out in the appropriate PPE and collaborating with your employees, you should be well set to create a safe workplace.
