In 2017, 5,147 workers lost their lives and over 2.8 million sustained injuries as a result of workplace injuries.
If there has been no worker fatality or injury in your workplace, these stats might not be as hard-hitting. As a result, it’s easy to slack on your workplace health and safety practices.
The truth is there is always some danger lurking in the workplace. An employee could slip and fall on a wet floor or tumble down the start and break their legs.
Don’t wait until something happens before taking action. Use this guide to ensure safety in your workplace.
Educate and Train Your Workers
Knowledge is power, right?
Educating your employees about workplace safety is one of the most effective ways to keep your workplace accident-free. Safety education and training enhance your workers’ ability to detect hazards and respond appropriately in case of an accident.
The education should cover everything from general safety measures in your industry to company-specific measures. If you run a manufacturing facility, for instance, your employees should be well informed about the safety in manufacturing settings a whole, as well as the safety practices in your manufacturing facility.
You can conduct the training in-house, but you can also send them to safety conferences and expos. Check out this website for more information on the latter.
Conduct Daily/Regular Inspections
Inasmuch as you can educate and train your employees about safety, they can only do so much. After all, it’s not their job to detect hazards in the workplace.
As such, it’s your responsibility to ensure the workplace is healthy and safe. You can hire a safety specialist, and one of their roles will be to perform regular inspections and catch potential hazards before they morph into deadly accidents.
Investigate Incidents
If there has been a safety incident at your workplace, did you investigate and get to the bottom of it?
If not, you’re setting up your workplace for more incidents. Perhaps you’ve adequate workers’ compensation coverage, so you see no need in spending any more money on incident investigation.
Well, you better start investigating. It’s only then you’ll learn what caused the incident and implement effective preventative measures.
Keep Good Records of Incidents
In addition to conducting investigations, be sure to maintain accurate reports of those incidents.
After a certain period of time, say one year, you can review the reports and establish incident trends or patterns. You’ll be able to point out the most common accidents and take the necessary steps to curb them. This might involve providing more training on those accidents.
Promote a Culture of Safety at Your Workplace
It’s one thing to improve the safety awareness of your employees, and it’s quite another to build a culture of safety at your workplace.
Sensitized employees will take measures to improve safety because it’s what you require of them. But when there is a strong safety culture, employees will naturally take steps to improve safety because they know it’s the best thing to do. They won’t feel like it’s an extra responsibility you’re putting on their shoulders.
To build this culture, lead by example and encourage your employees to be their colleague’s keeper. You can even introduce a safety week, where all you do is celebrate workplace safety.
Ensure Safety in Your Workplace
When you take steps to ensure safety in your workplace, you’re not only avoiding accidents, but also providing a happy environment for your employees. They will be more content and productive when they know nothing is out to get them.
Explore our blog for more workplace insights.
