Workplace Safety is paramount, injuries are expensive and often avoidable. No business is immune from safety concerns. Each workplace has different safety hazards depending on industry, location and specific function of the facility.
While each facility has it’s own unique set of hazards, here are some tips to provide a good starting point to identify some of the more common problems in your facility.
Table of Contents
- 1. Have a Safety Checklist
- 2. Check for Hazards
- 3. Keep Your Workplace Clean
- 4. Make Workplace Safety a Culture
- 5. Get the Right Equipment
- 6. Train your employees on Safety with Medswift
1. Have a Safety Checklist
Developing a comprehensive safety checklist is an important first step in creating a safer workplace. It serves as a solid foundation in identifying and recording potential hazards.
A good starting point is checking the Government health and safety regulations. Then organizing the regulations that pertain to your workplace. Once this is complete, work to create an easy to read template that can be easily accessed by employees and managers for reference.
This, in turn, becomes the Company’s Safety work procedures. A Safety Work Procedure is a set of written work instructions on how a job task should be conducted from start to finish.
2. Check for Hazards
Each type of business has its set of hazard and there is no complete list. So, check your workplace for hazards – you can’t prevent things you don’t know, can you? Inspect your business room by room for hazards such as boxes or debris that can be tripped on, misplaced electrical wiring, signs of leaks, etc. Once you have identified these hazards, remove the hazard or put up signage to warn employees of the danger. Taking immediate action will reduce the chance of injury and ensure employee safety.
3. Keep Your Workplace Clean
An unclean workplace can be a significant health and safety hazard. In fact, studies estimate that each year more than 20 million cases of acute gastroenteritis are caused by Norovirus. Norovirus spreads quickly mainly by touching surfaces or objects contaminated with Norovirus. This is only one kind of infection. Keep your workplace sanitary and make sure that all restrooms are cleaned at least once a day. Require employees to wash their hands after using the restroom and clean up after themselves in the lunchrooms and cafeteria.
4. Make Workplace Safety a Culture
How often do we talk about safety in our workplace, where we spend one-third of our adult lives? To truly create lasting change, you must create an environment in which safety is more than just a box to be checked, but is an attitude that makes up the very foundation of the company. And hence upheld by everyone from front-line workers to senior management. A culture of safety can be defined as the collective values, beliefs, attitudes, and norms that shape individual safety-related behaviors in an organization. With a culture of safety, everyone looks out for one another and encourages injury self-reporting without judgment or consequence. It’s about improving the culture and system as a whole to find the causal factors that led to those injuries or mistakes.
5. Get the Right Equipment
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We all know that having the right tools for the right job is an important element in providing customers with quality work. The same goes for having proper workplace safety equipment, products, and supplies. Ensure you have fire extinguishers, first aid kits and Personal protective equipment (PPE) if your workplace is technically explosive in nature.
6. Train your employees on Safety with Medswift
Workplace safety training will give your employees the knowledge and skills they need to protect equipment and facilities. moreover, it will help the employees with each other against unintentional injuries and death while reducing the associated costs to your organization. This is what we do at Medswift. We help you recognize safety hazards and correct them. We help you avoid incidents and near-misses to prevent injuries and understand safety best practices and expectations. Talk to Medswift today. —- This provides a baseline. However, a good follow up is to have a professional conduct a site assessment of your facility to identify additional hazards you may have missed. Let Medswift do that for your business.
