Workplace health & safety is clearly one of the more important elements of your business. You must ensure that your premises pass all the relevant health & safety checks, or you could be in serious trouble. For the most part, workplace h&s is fairly straightforward. You know how to, generally, keep everyone safe at work.
Nevertheless, there are three key things that almost everyone always forgets:
Fire safety
That’s right, fire safety is a core part of workplace health & safety. This encompasses a few things that you may neglect. Firstly, you have to ensure that your business is as fire-safe as possible – which means having designated fire exits, and fire doors and mitigating any fire hazards.
Arguably the most forgotten part of fire safety is putting things in place to deal with any fires. This includes fire blankets and fire extinguishers. To start, you need to have the right things in the right rooms to deal with specific fire hazards. Secondly, you need fire extinguisher training to ensure people actually know how to put out fires. With these things in place, your workplace will be in a better position to avoid fires and stop any from spreading or causing damage.
Signage
You probably will have a few health & safety signs dotted around the workplace. For instance, you’ve got some wet floor signs or caution signs ready to bring out when there’s an incident. But, do you have all the other signage that keeps your workplace as safe as possible?
As an example, are there warning signs near dangerous equipment, telling people of the possible hazards that could occur? Do you have instructional signs near equipment that informs workers of the correct way to use things? Stuff like this gets forgotten about all the time, often leading to injuries in the workplace that would’ve been avoided had a simple sign been present. Think about what might cause h&s concerns and then create signage to alert people to the possible dangers.
Manual handling
Regardless of what business you operate, there should be some manual handling training for every employee to follow. Why? Because there’s always a possibility that an employee has to bend and pick something up. In an office, this could simply be a box full of documents. Picking this up seems innocuous, but it can easily lead to an injury that you are liable for.
Training your employees and teaching them how to correctly pick objects up will alleviate lots of health and safety concerns. There is clear evidence that you have provided manual handling training to show every employee the safe way to pick up objects. Already, this training can prevent many injuries, but it also covers your tracks from a legal perspective if someone doesn’t follow the right technique and gets injured.
Alongside the obvious aspects of health & safety, you need to remember the three things above. Fire safety should always be a top priority, as should manual handling. Don’t forget about good h&s signage too; it will make your workplace a better place.
