Whether you own a school, retail outlet, or construction company, the possibility of you or your workers getting injured while on the job is often high. You are exposed to heavy equipment, slippery floors, chemical burns, toxic substances, and other conditions that can cause accidents and injuries.
Luckily, promoting workplace safety programs is easy and can help you prevent accidents and injuries at the workplace.
In this article, we will look at five ways to improve workplace safety, but let us first understand what you should do if you are in a dangerous profession.
How to ensure safety if you're in a dangerous profession?
Although suffering a workplace injury is possible for any worker, certain work environments such as construction sites, factories, and others with heavy machinery are more dangerous than others. Therefore, if you are in one of these most dangerous professions, it is important to take all necessary measures to ensure the safety of all workers.
The good thing is that workplace safety authorities have developed safety procedures for all dangerous professions to ensure that everyone feels safe at their workplace. Some of these include offering special safety training to help high-risk workers, using safety equipment, and having an emergency response and evacuation plan.
It is important for every company to implement and follow all the industry-specific safety measures set forth to ensure workers' safety and avoid legal implications in the event of an accident.
Four ways to ensure workplace safety in other less dangerous professions?
1. Conduct regular safety training
One of the most effective ways to ensure workplace safety is by training employees. New and old workers alike must be aware of all safety procedures and protocols about their specific position. This special training should take place regularly to mitigate the risks of workplace accidents and injuries.
2. Conduct hazard inspections
As an employer, it is important to always be aware of what could be a potentially dangerous situation at your place of work and what you can do to prevent it.
Whether you are continuing work at existing facilities or opening a new worksite, you need to conduct safety inspections regularly to uncover possible sources of danger. Sometimes this means hiring a full-time safety officer with special training to identify and analyze hazards.
3. Encourage accountability
Assigning individuals or small groups certain jobs can help encourage accountability among them.
For instance, choosing to have a buddy system, where two individuals operate together as a single unit, can help decrease accidents as the "buddies" will be helping and monitoring each other. Similarly, using regular check-ins, roll calls, and other simple measures that encourage accountability will help prevent disaster at the workplace.
4. Keep things clean
Last but certainly not least, one of the most effective ways to ensure workplace safety is by maintaining cleanliness. A clean and organized workplace creates a safer work atmosphere, while a messy area can lead to serious but avoidable accidents.
Therefore, make sure spills are cleaned up immediately and stack boxes safely at all times. Disorganized tools, tangled cords, and messy floors should never be part of your workspace.
More importantly, bear in mind that workplace cleanliness does not only entail sweeping around and keeping things organized. You also need to consider lighting fixtures and proper ventilation.
Wrapping up
In conclusion, no single worker should ever have to worry about going to work because of safety issues. As an employer, you need to always remember that you have a legal obligation to ensure employees' safety and that you may have to compensate them for injuries or deaths that arise out of and in the course of employment.
© 2017 Jobs & Hire All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
* This is a contributed article and this content does not necessarily represent the views of jobsnhire.com
