No matter your position in the hierarchy of a business, it’s important to put workplace safety first. While you might think that only managers and CEOs should be considering health and safety risks, staying safe at work is the responsibility of everyone. If you want to make things safer for yourself and your colleagues, you should start out with a risk management exercise to identify and evaluate potential risks.
In this article, we’ll be sharing ways you can make your workplace safer, including how to spot hazards and steps you can take to minimise their potential risks. Whatever kind of company you work for, safety should be a priority, and staying safe will help to improve efficiency and productivity while ensuring there’s less risk of serious accidents.
Ensuring the Correct Signage
If you’ve been in a workplace for a long time, you probably know your way around and can complete your job while barely paying attention. However, the same isn’t true for people who are new or inexperienced. For this reason, it’s important to have the right training and also to ensure that your workplace includes signs and warnings where needed.
Signs are an important way to convey information quickly. Whether it’s a prohibition sign that warms people against going past a certain point or a sign that reminds people of health and safety advice, they can be very useful. If you want to ensure your workplace is as safe as possible, having clear and up-to-date signs is a great way to start.
The best signs use bold colours and are easily recognisable, even from a distance. This will help those that work there, as well as visitors and customers, to understand what’s going on and how to remain safe. Even if your workplace doesn’t have a lot of hazards, such as heavy machinery, signs can still be used to block off certain areas or display where fire exits are.
Regular Risk Assessments
Risk assessments are essential if you want to ensure that risks are identified and managed. While some workplaces will carry out an initial risk assessment when they first open, it’s important to perform them regularly as risks can change over time, and new risks can also appear. This is especially true of a changing business, but any workplace should require regular assessments.
When identifying risks, it’s important to look at every aspect of the workplace and the potential hazards that can occur. This can be as simple as slipping on a wet floor or as complex as becoming injured by a piece of machinery. Once identified, the next step of the process is to evaluate each risk and work out the impact of each before finding ways to reduce them.
First Aid Training
Standard safety training should be a normal part of training for every employee, and this should be updated regularly and where needed. However, if you want to improve the safety of your workplace, you should also consider first aid training. While most workplaces have a designated first aid responder, the more people know and understand basic first aid, the better.
Regular first aid training helps to ensure that everyone is aware of how to deal with injuries and accidents when they occur. That way, you can be sure that someone will always be available to react, and this can potentially save lives and reduce the risk of serious injuries.
On top of training, it’s essential to make sure that first aid kits are available. These kits should contain basic first aid items, and should be inspected regularly to ensure they have the right equipment and supplies.
