Keeping your employees safe at work

As an employer, one of your top priorities should always be to keep your employees safe whilst they’re working. Whether your business has one employee or one hundred employees, it’s your job as an employer to make sure that they stay safe whilst going about their business. This doesn’t need to be complicated, but you do need to put some thought into how to make the work environment as safe as possible.

Each business is unique, so you’ll need to tailor your procedures to meet the needs of your business, but these are a few guidelines to help you to get started.

Know the legal requirements in your area

Health & safety requirements for businesses vary a great deal depending on what area of the world you’re in and what type of business you’re in too. It’s really important to stay on top of the requirements and make sure you regularly update yourself so that your business is always 100% compliant.

Regular Risk Assessments

When you first start up a new business, you’ll need to do a risk assessment of your premises. Your risk assessment should include things like:

• Identifying potential hazards
• Identify who might be at risk
• Evaluate the level of risk

Once you’ve worked out the risks, you can then make plans for how you will minimize the risks for your employees.

You should incorporate regular risk assessments into the day to day running of your business. As your business grows and changes, so will the risks, so it’s important to evaluate this regularly in order to make sure that you keep everybody as safe as possible whilst they’re working.

You will need to carry out different risk assessments for different areas of the building, and also risk assessments tailored to each person’s role too. For example, a warehouse worker will need a very different type of risk assessment from somebody working in the office on customer services. Make sure you talk to your staff about their day to day jobs too and learn from them about the risks involved when doing their work.

Regular Safety Briefings & Fire Drills

Your employees need to be kept up to date with health & safety requirements so that they know exactly what’s expected of them, how to keep themselves safe, and what to do in case of an emergency.

You should always carry out regular fire drills at different times of the day so that your employees get used to what to do in the event of a fire. Everybody needs to know where to go in an emergency situation.

Make sure that muster points are clearly marked so that even visitors know where to go if the fire alarm goes off whilst they’re in the building.

Install adequate safety equipment

Make sure that you have adequate safety equipment to hand for your business. As well as keeping people safe, you may have high value equipment that you need to keep safe and secure too. What you need will vary depending on the type of business you run. If you’re unsure, then you can always seek advice from a reputable company such as Tech Services of NJ.

Here are a few things you might want to consider for your business:

• Integrated fire alarm system
• Burglar alarm
• Alarm system management – take a look at New Jersey alarm companies to see what kind of management is available.
• Security cameras
• Access control systems to limit who can and can’t access certain areas of the workplace
• Handrails
• Personal Protective Equipment

Use high vis jackets where necessary

One of the simplest and cheapest ways to add a layer of protection to anyone in the workplace is to require them to wear a high vis jacket.

When I used to work in an office, we were attached to a warehouse which we had to walk through in order to get to the bathroom, make a drink, or just leave the premises. Initially, we weren’t given high vis jackets, and there were a number of dicey moments where fork-lift truck drivers just didn’t see us walking through the dark warehouse. We were quickly allocated a high vis jacket each and this made us far more visible to the warehouse staff. For regular staff, you can supply them with their own jacket, but you should also make sure you have spares hung up for visitors too.

No matter how small or big your business, makes sure you stay on top of keeping your employees and visitors safe whenever they are in the workplace. Health & safety practices and procedures should quickly become a part of your daily routine so you’ll need to have systems in place that are easy to follow and allow for adaptation as needed. As your business grows, you may need to employ somebody who’s job it is to solely look after the health and safety of your workforce.