Best practice safety protocols business owners should know

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By Reggie Moore

If you are a business owner or just starting, your workers’ safety should be one of the top priorities. Harmful incidents could lead to employee injuries, hefty fines, lawsuits, rising workers’ compensation costs, and damaged reputation.

By considering workers’ safety, you’ll avoid the things mentioned above and motivate your employees. Remember that safety is one of the morale-boosting factors in any business environment. Therefore, it’s necessary to look out for your workers while they’re putting in the hard work.

In this blog post, we cover safety measures to put in place to save your business lots of money and other stress.

Read on to know how best to protect your employees:

Make safety your top priority

While everyone should play their unique roles in ensuring safety, the entire safety responsibility lies with the business owners. Everything within the workplace should point towards workplace safety. For instance, business owners should ensure that heavy equipment should be appropriately positioned within the working space. The machines should be arranged in a manner that emphasizes efficiency and safety. Knowing how to properly position equipment during operational use or storage, particularly for tall equipment such as bucket trucks, so they don’t put users in danger of hitting power lines will be well worth your time. Helpful tools such as a rolling platform should be easily available when needed to keep employees from taking unnecessary risks.

To make it effective, business owners should include safety in their culture. The company should then offer consistent training to workers on safe working conditions. Besides, companies should hold discussions regarding safety matters during management-employee sessions. Also, make sure your team is aware of all pertinent safety rules and regulations, including information about workers compensation claims and applicable laws. It is worth remembering that if you are not following appropriate safety procedures and an injury occurs, the injured worker is within their rights to reach out to a workers’ compensation law office for advise with regards to a possible claim.

Provide medical aid training sessions

Accidents often occur in the workplace. It’s necessary to have a qualified person administer primary treatments when accidents occur. Businesses should explain the necessity to have these skills. Business owners should ensure that their workers receive medical aid training to learn about what they need to do during medical emergencies.

Although expensive, your employees’ knowledge of medical aid skills will help you minimize the risks during emergencies. Moreover, if you’re unable to provide first aid kits, you should encourage your workers to buy them.

Providing the proper protective gear for the job is not enough. It’s vital to ensure that your team of workers receives adequate training on using the equipment, for example, a gas mask and powered air purifying respirator papr will need in-depth training as it’s vital that the product is used correctly.

Enforcing regular practice of safe habits

Albeit tiresome and hectic, practice leads to perfection. So, why not enforce repeated safety drills and presentations? It would be best to ensure your employees repeatedly perform safety drills on spills, gas leaks, trip hazards, and more. This will enable them to improve their reactions during real risky situations.

Such simulated scenarios help them know how to react when accidents happen. Equipping them with this kind of knowledge ensures workers are better prepared for emergencies, ensuring safety.

However, this doesn’t mean that all the safety training should be pre-planned. Supervisors should respond if they notice any unsafe behavior or accident. In turn, managers will turn dangerous behaviors into a teaching opportunity.

Besides protecting your team of workers, repeating these safety drills will avoid unnecessary costs in the long-term.

Analyze the job-related risks

Business owners need to understand on-the-job risks. A thorough job hazard analysis is the first step before implementing a workplace safety program.

Job hazard analysis is a process that involves the documentation of the apparent risks associated with every task your workers do. After this, you will create an effective plan to reduce the risks. The job hazard analysis should focus on how the workers relate with their assigned tasks, working place, and the tools they will use.

Besides listing the potential risks, the Job Hazard analysis should outline the training your employees require. The training is meant to help them manage the hazards safely.

Issue personal protective equipment

Providing personal protective equipment (PPE) to your workers is often considered the least influential safety component. But that’s not to say it shouldn’t be issued. PPEs are placed at the bottom of the hierarchy of safety controls within the workplace. However, it’s essential to have safety equipment in the workplace, especially if you run a manufacturing or construction enterprise.

The type of safety equipment depends on the kind of job. But they could include items such as high-visibility clothing, fall-protective gear, and more.

Examples of safety equipment include:

-Earplugs
-Hard hats
-Goggles
-Gas detection tools
-Fire extinguishers

Providing the proper protective gear for the job is not enough. It’s vital to ensure that your team of workers receives adequate training on using the equipment.

The workplace is a dynamic environment. So, safety guidelines should as well evolve. Business owners hire new employees, buy new machines, and change their working styles. It is, therefore, necessary to adopt new safety measures. The safety measures we’ve discussed are easy to implement and are the baseline to start from. Some of them could be expensive to adopt, but they will ultimately be less expensive than replacing people, equipment, and money you lose from lawsuits. Employees will stay motivated, knowing you care about their working environment safety. Besides, you will not spend your small business’s funds to cover your employees’ medical expenses. Therefore, employers should ensure proper safety measures to protect their employees and themselves. If the above tips are followed to the latter, then safety is guaranteed.

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Reggie Moore is a professional writer and proto-entrepreneur. When not trying to tinker with a new thing, process, or idea, Reggie can usually be found saying the words “Well, actually…” to an unsuspecting bystander.

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