Accidents at work can be ruinous for businesses. It doesn’t matter if they’re a multinational corporation or a startup. It doesn’t take a lot to cause an accident either. The result of one small mistake can result in a crumbling of the business. So what can business owners do to prevent this? Is there a sure-fire way to prevent accidents? Not completely. That doesn’t mean you should ignore ways to cut the risk down to an almost impossibility. Here are a few ways you can cut that risk.
Health & Safety Training
Everybody should handle health and safety in the workplace. This is an idea you should drill into the heads of your employees. If they don’t do something to prevent risk, who will? Giving them a proper health and safety training will allow them to understand this. It may take a few sessions to train them fully, but it’ll be well worth it. You are cutting your business’ liability by introducing health and safety training.
One worry that employers have about health and safety training and awareness is that employees won’t engage fully. However, ‘health and safety has, at least to a large extent, solved this problem’, says David Rowland, the head of marketing Engage EHS. This is because the process is much more social and, if you must, you can measure your employees’ engagement in the process.
Warnings
If there are any health and safety risks in the area, provide a warning to employees. If janitorial staff have to mop a floor, give them access to a warning sign to put up. Slip and fall settlements can be costly. You can prevent these from occurring or causing major legal and economic repercussions by warning employees of slipping and tripping hazards early on, and having a slip and fall attorney to rely on if any of these incidents must be handled legally in some way. Warnings can also be used to mark falling hazards. They can also be used to show hazardous areas that should not be entered.
Risk Assessment
We’ve already talked about health and safety training making everybody responsible. That said, you need to be aware of the large risks ongoing in the work environment. Businesses need to know what the big concerns are. They need to identify the safety hazards and make them safe as soon as possible. In a business structure, reports are key. At the top of the business, you cannot identify what’s going on nearer the bottom. Reports are written by management close to the situation, and then they are handed up. That’ll be used for future risk assessment purposes. It’ll help point out the possible risks before they become a real problem.
Safety First Approach
Some employees will chastise businesses for being so overly sensitive to health and safety risk. Despite their frustration, the work is being done with their interests in mind. Health and safety are only efficient when you make safety the priority of any situation. Sometimes it may seem a bit overzealous. Sometimes it might seem like it complicates matters. What you have to remember is that those health and safety measures are there for a reason. Not matter how coddling some may seem to both you and employees.
Participate
Don’t make yourself a bad example. If there are hazards in the way that should be cleared out, do them yourself if you have to. If you don’t follow the health and safety rules you’ve set, how can you expect anybody else in the business to either?
Accidents at work are awful. Work should be a safe place for anybody. Business has a large role to play in making sure that it is.
