Health and safety in the workplace is not just an essential piece of legislation we all have to abide by in the office, it is about making sure we are all catered for properly. Many institutions are hot on the effects of bad posture and staring at your computer screen for too long, but there are other things to think about to make sure that your employees are working healthily and happily in their day to day lives.
An office environment can be one of the most germ-infested places in the world, and if it comes as a surprise to you, think about the last time that you cleaned your computer. They say that a computer keyboard has more germs on it than a toilet bowl! So get the right cleaning products in or you will have to deal with an influx of bugs and flies. Contacting a company like Commercial Fly Control deal with instances like this constantly but prevention is better than cure when it comes to germs and bugs. It is also worth making sure that your office is ventilated properly. The small issues are the ones that can affect a staff member’s ability to work properly, and a lack of ventilation, or the temperature being too hot or cold are little things, but they can impact on productivity in a massive way.
A big thing in health and safety is the amount of breaks that people are taking. Because of things like deadlines, people are seldom getting up from their computers as often as they should, and over time it can have a massive impact on our posture, but it can also have a devastating effect on our sleep. If you have a group of staff members that are working late into the night to get a project finished, the next best thing to do, if your staff really doesn’t have time for breaks, is to have filters installed on their screens. Either ones that attach to the screen or you can download a program called F.Lux. The impact blue light can have on our ability to produce melatonin, the sleep hormone, is huge. The same goes for when you stare at your phone before you go to bed, the blue light being emitted is having an impact on your sleep quality. You may have slept the appropriate amount of hours, but you are not feeling properly rested.
And on the topic of health and safety, feeling healthy, inside and out, is a big thing to promote. Mental health is still a bit of a taboo subject, depending on the environment you work in, and many of the older guard still find it a subject that is out of sight and out of mind. Promoting a secure and confidential environment for your staff to communicate their feelings is vital in a workplace, not just from the business standpoint, but also from the workers’ perspective. They need to feel that if they have an issue, be it personal or work-related, that they can speak to you and that you will listen, with confidence, so dont do yourself, or your business, a disservice.
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