Prioritizing Health And Safety in Your Business

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13 Dec. 2018. Prioritizing health and safety in your business is absolutely essential if you want a safe, legally compliant business and happy employees. When your employees are safe, they can be more productive and feel happier at work. Below, we’ll talk about this in more detail:

Having a health and safety policy

Your workplace needs a health and safety policy that protects both physical and mental health. Having a general policy in place will make implementing specific safety guidelines easier. You should mention what your organization sets to achieve to meet legislation, who is responsible for ensuring these objectives are achieved, and how the safety procedures will work.

Designating a health and safety person

It’s so important to appoint a qualified individual to oversee and manage policies and procedures. This eliminates confusion and ambiguity about rules and regulations, and better ensures that everybody remains compliant.

Ensuring equipment is working and safe

Many places use industrial equipment to get the job done. If this equipment is not properly maintained, it can endanger the safety of employees. It should be cleaned and checked over on a regular basis, and repaired or replaced if needs be.

Training And uniforms for employees

Proper training is a must for your employees, but workplace accidents are made worse because employees don’t know how to respond. This can make a simple equipment malfunction into an emergency. Training of staff is an absolute requirement by law, so make sure you do it and do it well.

It’s important that your employees wear appropriate protective equipment too. Sometimes, employers assume that only employees working with heavy machinery need protective gear. However, there are many industries that should enforce dress code standards. For example, you may want to shop for unisex scrubs if you run a clinic or another medical facility, or non-slip shoes for workers in a restaurant.

Mental health should never be undervalued

Many business owners now realize how important it is to focus on reducing levels of work-related stress. This can be caused by all kinds of things in the workplace, including sexual harassment discrimination. Provide training and coaching sessions that help your employees make all people feel safe and included. It’s also important to take note of employees who may feel overworked and underappreciated. You should encourage open and honest communication between managers and employees to combat this.

Show you care about wellness

It’s so important to show your team that you truly care about their well being. Make sure you build time into the workday for employees to walk around and get exercise. Encourage regular breaks, and consider giving them healthier incentives, too, such as gym memberships. Providing a reasonable holiday policy can help also help to promote the wellness of your employees.

Some businesses are even implementing no limit on the holiday time that their employees can have off, and as a result, fewer holiday days are being taken, but more freedom and happiness is enjoyed in the workplace as it is more relaxed. Well rested employees make less mistakes, are more focused, and are much less inclined to be involved in an incident.

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