How To Improve Health And Safety In Your Business
Every employer has a duty of care towards their employees, and they must keep those employees as safe as possible while they are at work. The better your health and safety policies and practices are, the happier, more loyal, and more productive your team will be, plus your business will gain a good reputation for taking care of its staff. If you’re looking for ways to improve the health and safety aspects of your business, read on for some excellent ideas.
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Ergonomics
Ergonomics is going to be most useful when you are working in an office environment. It essentially means using furniture like chairs and desks that are designed to support the body, and therefore make it more comfortable to use as well as protecting the spine, hips, knees, ankles, shoulders, and wrists.
The more ergonomic equipment you have (including chairs, desks, footrests, keyboards, and mice), the more comfortable your team will be, and the more productive they will be too.
PPE
If your employees do any kind of tasks that require PPE (personal protective equipment) including masks, gloves, earplugs, safety boots, high-visibility clothing, hard hats, and similar, then you must ensure that they have what they need, that they are the right items for the job being undertaken, and that your staff understands how to use them correctly. Providing the wrong PPE or not showing people how to use the equipment is as bad as not having any at all.
Risk Assessments
One of the best ways to protect your staff is to carry out detailed risk assessments across your business. When doing this, you will be able to determine any unsafe areas in your building or any unsafe practices that are currently being carried out. Once you know where the problems are, you can solve them and ensure things become much safer.
Depending on the size of your business, risk assessments can be a full-time job, so hiring an expert to ensure that all is well throughout your entire enterprise is the best way to handle things. A dedicated health and safety advisor will do more than risk assessments too; they will know the best people to contact should anything go wrong, even if it’s a very specific person such as competent mining accident injury lawyers. In this way, you can keep on top of any situation no matter what has happened.
First Aid Training
We’ve already mentioned how training is crucial when it comes to PPE and ensuring that it is used in the right way to protect your employees, but there is another element of training that will also ensure that the health and safety within your business is kept up to date; first aid training.
Not every member of staff needs to be fully trained in first aid. Depending on how many employees you have, you should work on the premise of having one trained first aider for every 50 employees plus one ‘spare’ in case the other is on vacation or sick. It’s best to find out who is interested in being a first aider in your team and talk to them about the different training courses they can take part in – paid for by the company, of course.
