There’s a reason that health and safety are high on the list of priorities for HR departments in all businesses. They’re of critical importance to the success and viability of any company. Indeed, no organisation is immune to the potential impacts of negligence towards them, which is why you must make sure that safety is paramount.
Why?
There are three main reasons that you absolutely must consider safety at all times. The first is that quite simply you have a moral responsibility to keep your employees safe, and not doing so will harm both them personally and the work that they do for you. The second is that negligence will cost you financially – both in terms of fines and lack of productivity resulting from absence from work. The final point is reserved for only the most serious of cases, but fall foul of the law in your local authority and you could well find yourself with a criminal conviction.
How?
Fortunately, it’s not too difficult to follow correct procedures; it’s all about using common sense, and there are a raft of helpful guides out there, both from governments and specialists. We all know that you have to have the right equipment and follow checklists. The difficulty however can often lie in making sure that safety is a primary concern for all employees, not just senior management and HR.
There are several things that you can do to really instill health and safety into the mindset of your staff. Signage is one of those things. People often like to laugh about excessive signs around the workplace – warning of hot water in the taps for instance, but they really are important and they really do work. Placing signs at all hazards will ensure that people are thinking about health and safety at all times.
Training is extremely useful too. Everyone will go through a basic run-through on their first day of employment but that’s not enough. You need to regularly train all employees, especially when there are updates to either legislation, or the way you do things in your workplace. As an example, even if an employee is unlikely to come into contact with a piece of new machinery, they should at the very least be shown why it is dangerous and how to stay safe around it. Not everyone will be driving a forklift, but everyone needs to me made aware of how to be safe when they’re operating in the area. Even then forklift drivers make mistakes too so installing tough racking protection is a wise move.
Finally, and it’s something that you shouldn’t have to come to, but being strict will ensure nobody forgets. Serious breaches of health and safety procedure should result in formal warnings; after all, when things go wrong, you’re risking financial issues, trouble with the law, and the wellbeing of your employees.
