Safety Precautions in the Workplace

Added: 22 Feb 2013 16:15 - Workplace Health and Safety

Regardless of how safe a workplace may seem, there are always risks which can be a danger to staff, clients and isitors. It’s important to take preventative steps to ensure that workplace accidents do not occur. Ideally workspaces hould be designed with safety in mind, to maintain productivity as well as to ensure the safety of employees. It’s easy to assume that staff employ common sense in their work but communicating safety precautions and safe working practises is the responsibility of the employer. This article details some of the ways you can improve safety in the workplace.

Cleanliness

It’s surprising the amount of workplace accidents that could be prevented through adequate cleaning. Spillages and clutter are a key cause of accidents so maintaining a clean and tidy environment reduces the likelihood of accidents occurring. This could be something simply like slips and falls, or more complicated and severe situations such as those involving electrical hazards.

Plan Together

While it’s important that bosses and managers show leadership in safety planning, and that this is communicated clearly to all employees through training and written instruction, nobody knows the risks involved in specific jobs than the people who work them. Involving them in the safety planning process will help to identify additional issues that may not have been identified through top-down analysis. Follow staff suggestions about workplace safety, including supplying protective equipment to protect their health.

You should encourage employees to bring safety deficiency to the attention of managers at the earliest possible opportunity, to avoid an accident occurring. Staff should not feel that they can’t be open about their safety concerns, and it is employer’s responsibility to act on these concerns and minimise safety weaknesses.

Watch and Learn

Even if you have detailed procedures for how tasks are performed by employees, you may find that different employees will execute the same task with variations that are undocumented. Watching employees perform their jobs will give managers a better insight into the risks involved. Sometimes shortcuts that pose unnecessary risk can be identified and outlawed, while at other times more efficient or safe ways of executing tasks can be identified, relayed to others and added to the documented procedure.

Regularly Review

No workplace remains static. Even if the technology, work types and processes remain the same, the staff is constantly changing. The workplace itself may also change as the business expands or adopts new technologies. This is why it’s important to revisit safety guidelines on a regular basis, to review their effectiveness and find out if any recent changes pose new safety risks which have not been previously identified and mitigated. The workplace is constantly evolving so safety policies should too.

Nothing is more important than the safety of staff and clients within a business. While reactive change is an important way of minimising future accidents, pre-emptive steps should be taken to identify and mitigate risks posed to individuals in the workplace. Implementing safe working processes and procedures is the best way to ensure that safe working practises are carried out.

What if an accident should occur?

If, after all precautions have been met, an accident still occurs, then legal action may be carried out. This isn’t always a bad thing or to be considered as a conflict between employer and employee. Many accidents in the workplace can be truly debilitating and necessitate fair compensation for the pain and damage caused. In these instances it’s better to go with one of the large more distinguished law firms, such as Beecham Peacock, as they tend to handle delicate accidents at work cases very well.