According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that there were 2.8 million nonfatal injuries and illnesses in the workplace.
In order to make sure none of these injuries happen at your company, you need to implement job site safety.
But why is it important? And how can you implement it? Keep reading to find out!
Why It’s Important
Workplace safety is incredibly important because it shows that you care about your employees.
However, it will also help benefit your company as well!
Improve Productivity
For one, it’ll help your employees feel safer and improve productivity. If a lot of your employees are getting injured on the job, they might start feeling anxious about coming into work.
They may also feel like you don’t care about their safety. But when you eliminate workplace injuries and show them that you’re invested in their safety, they’ll feel more secure and will feel like they can focus and do their best work.
Minimize Losses
You’ll also help to minimize losses, not just with your employees, but with your finances as well.
If an employee gets injured or dies on the job, you’ll have to pay money in all sorts of claims. For example, if someone who worked as a lineman could get injured and decide to hire a power lineman injury lawyer to sue you if you didn’t take precautions to keep them safe.
Build Up Your Reputation
If all of your workers know that your place isn’t safe to work at, word will get around. You’ll earn yourself a reputation as an unsafe employer, and this will negatively affect you when you try and hire new employees.
Plus, your customers and competitors will see you as unprofessional and callous when you don’t care about your employees.
Retain Employees
If you want to keep your employees, you should provide them safe workspaces. This shows that you care about their well-being.
And if employees feel like you’re going to keep them safe, they’re more likely to stay with you rather than search for an employee who will care about their safety.
How to Achieve Safety
If you currently don’t have safety practices in place at work, you might be violating certain laws and regulations.
There are a few things that you can do to keep anyone from being hurt on the job, like measuring safety measures, identifying hazards, and making sure your employees communicate with each other.
Measure Your Safety
If you already have safety policies enacted, you need to make sure that you’re measuring them to ensure they work.
You might wonder how you can even manage it, but you can run random audits with a quality control team to ensure that everyone is doing their part. You can also run routine checks on equipment to make sure that it’s working properly.
When you have these audits, you can measure how many things are wrong and need to be fixed. You can also measure your safety by how many injuries or deaths you have each quarter.
Identify Hazards
Identifying hazards before something bad happens can also help you realize what safety policies need to be in place.
For example, any equipment that employees use for tasks can pose potential dangers. The danger could happen if it malfunctions or if your employees aren’t trained properly.
So to avoid that, make sure that you always have routine checks of the equipment and train your employees on how to use them.
Other hazards could be the environment and employee behaviors. Sit down with a safety team and figure out how you can minimize these risks while still operating your business.
Communicate
Make sure that all employees are aware that safety is your top priority. They should always be thinking about their own safety and that of their coworkers’.
There is plenty of technology and apps out there that can help you communicate with all of your employees at once. You should let them know of any safety incidents that happen instead of trying to hide them.
You should also issue warnings and have evidence of what someone did if you find them posing safety hazards to their coworkers or themselves.
Offer Training
When you offer safety training, it should be annual and everyone in the company should have to take it. This shouldn’t be just for employees who are using the equipment, but also make your other employees take it.
This way they know what dangers could happen if they go into an unsafe area and accidentally use that equipment.
You should also make sure that all employees are properly trained in CPR, basic first aid, and how to use a defibrillator in case an accident does happen.
Use the Right Gear
While protective gear might be another added cost for your business, it really does help keep your employees safe. The equipment might vary based on the type of industry you’re in, but in general, you should always have these available:
- Hard hats
- Protective clothing
- First aid kits
- Defibrillators
- Breathing masks
- Fire extinguishers
- Gloves
- Hard hats
- Goggles
Even if your employees won’t use these every day, having them on hand can really help change the course of an emergency.
Learn More About How to Ensure Job Site Safety
These are only a few things to know about job site safety, but there are many more ways that you can implement it.
We know that running a business can be stressful and overwhelming, but we’re here to help you out!
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