Tips To Keep Your Workers Safe Without Affecting Productivity

Worker safety and protection is a critical issue that most businesses across the UK and world are constantly dealing with. When not implemented correctly, it not only puts workers’ lives in danger and exposes them to temporary or permanent injury, but it also reduces overall business productivity by a significant margin.

So if you own a business where a lot of workers put their heart and soul into keeping routine operations running, you need to take the necessary steps to safeguard them without affecting productivity and output. Here are a few tips that will help you ensure that you keep your employees safe.

IMAGE: PEXELS

Carry Out A Risk Assessment

Before you can begin to improve and manage safety, you must conduct a thorough assessment of the risks that workers face. This involves identifying what could cause harm to personnel, such as machinery, noise levels, hazardous substances, exposure to electricity, fire risk, working at height and confined spaces. Once you have evaluated the hazards and who is at risk, take measures to reduce the dangers as far as possible and document your assessment.

Provide The Correct PPE For Your Workers

After you have taken preventative measures to minimize risks in the workplace, the next step is to provide workers with suitable personal protective equipment (PPE) before they carry out their work. PPE helps protect your staff against injury and accidents on site. Accidents can be devastating, not only in terms of the injury to your employee but also the potential legal impact it could have on your business. If you’ve not yet bought the required uniform and tools, it’s important to source a reputable PPE supplier make sure you get the right PPE for the tasks your team need to do.

Have Regular Training Sessions In Place

Next you need to make the necessary arrangements to educate your workers on how to use PPE properly. This is where regular training sessions play a critical role and give all your workers, especially those who have recently joined, an opportunity to get familiar with various safety equipment and learn how to recognize potentially dangerous situations.

You might also choose to call in workplace health and safety experts from time to time to discuss the latest trends and practices in the industry. Place safety instructions at different locations in the workplace so workers can constantly remain vigilant and know what activities should be avoided.

Most large-scale factories and production facilities follow this approach to keep their staff accountable for the health and safety of each other. By making health and safety a team effort, you can benefit from the sense of morale you’ve already cultivated among employees.

Reward Them For Their On-Site Behaviour

Have certain safety parameters in place at work and ask all employees to follow them. Consider a reward scheme that allows employees to earn points for adhering to safety and protection measures. Acknowledge those who earn the highest number of points every month and reward them with gift cards and recognition, which will also motivate others to follow this practice. A little competition doesn’t hurt — especially when it’s in the name of health and safety.

This is similar to the incentive programmes run by most organizations across the globe — the only difference is that you’re motivating your workers to avoid injuries, thereby minimizing idle hours and improving productivity in the long run.

Keep Things Organized

Just because there are multiple machines and tools present at the workplace doesn’t mean it has to be cluttered and messy. In fact, a disorganized workplace can create more opportunities for injury than anything else. Have everything in order and keep your floor as clean as possible. Motivate all your workers to follow the safety and cleaning instructions given by the senior management and clearly signpost processes to employees at all times — so that new members can get on with their job without having to constantly ask a colleague or chase down management.

These are just some of the points you should follow to keep workers safe. Done properly, adhering to health and safety not only keeps productivity intact, but it can dramatically improve it.

Author Bio: Glen Smith has been handling corporate branding, company clothing, and PPE at WISE Worksafe for over 15 years. He has a passion for making brands stand out from the crowd, and helping organizations provide their people with the perfect uniform and workwear.

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