According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are about 2.8 million workplace-related injuries and illnesses reported each year. They lead to almost 1 million American workers missing at least some time at work.
With these things in mind, you should make sure that your business takes the health and safety of your employees seriously. There are things that your company should be doing to ensure that your employees’ occupational safety and health are a top priority.
Take a look at five occupational health and safety practices that you can put into place to keep your employees safe as you move forward below.
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1. Identify Potential Safety Hazards in Your Workplace
What are some of the things in your workplace that could potentially lead to your employees suffering injuries and illnesses? You should work to identify these things ASAP so that you can make your employees aware of them.
You’re going to have a difficult time dealing with safety hazards if you don’t actually know what they are. It’s why you should take a step back when you’re first setting up your business and identify each and every one of them.
2. Come Up With a Surefire Health and Safety Plan
Once you know exactly what your employees are going to be up against in terms of safety hazards, you should sit down and create a long list of safety rules for your workplace. You’ll need to institute a health and safety code that all your employees agree to follow.
You should post your company’s safety rules in a place where you know your employees will see them early and often. You should also update your safety rules as you add more rules to your master list.
3. Hold Regular Health and Safety Meetings With Your Employees
It’s going to be very easy for your employees to lose sight of the fact that they need to keep health and safety in the back of their minds at all times. They might let their guard down every now and then—and that is usually when accidents are going to occur.
You can reduce the chances of this happening by holding routine health and safety meetings with your employees. You’ll be able to provide them with refreshers on your safety rules so that they don’t ever forget about them.
4. Set Your Employees Up With the Necessary Protective Gear
Depending on what type of company that you run, you might need to provide your employees with protective gear to keep them safe while they’re at work. If you need to do this, you should stock up on high-quality gear that’s going to keep them well-protected at all times.
Hi-Viz has some excellent options for those in the market for safety vests, high-visibility shirts and jackets, and more.
5. Investigate Workplace Accidents and Aim to Avoid Them in the Future
No matter how careful you might be when it comes to the health and safety of your employees, accidents are still bound to happen. It comes with the territory when you run a company.
When accidents occur, you should make it a point to investigate them and learn from them. It’s going to be the only way that you can steer clear of similar accidents in the future.
The Health and Safety of Your Employees Should Be Very Important to You
Your employees are the lifeblood of your company. As a result, you need to make sure that they’re safe every single day.
If you don’t feel as though you’re putting the health and safety of your employees first as of right now, aim to change that immediately. Put some of the practices that we’ve discussed here into place to make your workplace safer as a whole.
Find more business-related tips and tricks by reading through the other informative articles found on our blog.
