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clock August 9, 2020

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Work Safety Tips to Protect Both You and Your Employees

Are you looking for different ways to boost the safety precautions in your workplace? If so, then you might be at a loss for where to start.

To get started, you should learn of all the potential hazards and injuries that your workers are at risk of. Only then will you be able to properly train your staff on how to avoid them, thus making your workplace as risk-free as possible.

Here are several work safety tips on how to protect and educate your staff to keep them safe. Be sure to consider all of the steps below as you make your plan.

Set Aside Training Time

The time that you take to train your employees has a direct effect on how seriously they’ll use the tips you give them. If you speed through the training course to get them back to work, they won’t see it as a serious threat.

However, workplace injuries are very real in this day in age. One injury without proper workers’ compensation policies in place can lead to the demise of your entire company.

Because of that, you need to set aside several hours each quarter to educate your staff on the risks of the workforce. Be sure to plan out how you’d like to accrue those training hours.

For example, rather than taking an entire day of work each quarter to train your staff, you can split it up into a one or two-hour segment each week. This will also help them retain the information that you give them, rather than listing it all in one day.

Place Signs Around the Office

Do you have that one spot in your office that keeps you up at night, worried that someone will slip and fall on it? Maybe there’s a room where your staff has placed boxes where they shouldn’t be.

Sometimes a workplace sign can be a helpful reminder for your employees to remain as dutiful as possible. They can send safety instructions to your staff in a friendly tone.

For example, placing a sign that reads “please keep boxes off the floor and out of the walkway” will remind everyone to unload the boxes, rather than letting them pile up.

Of course, there are other forms of signs that you must have. While wet floor signs are technically required by law, your company can land in some serious trouble if they slip on a wet floor that didn’t have a sign in place.

Prioritize Workplace Cleanliness

A sloppy workplace can be just as dangerous, if not more so, than a wet floor. Scenarios such as the previously-mentioned stacked boxes or spills that go uncleaned can lead to a serious injury.

To make sure your workplace is as clean as can be, you need to communicate it to your staff. Then, you need to lead by example. 

If a worker notices that an area is clean before they stepped into the room, they’ll do their utmost to keep it that way. But they won’t care about providing more filth to an already-unclean workspace.

In order to enforce the cleanliness of your company, be sure to perform frequent inspections of each work area, break room, etc. Also, it might be helpful to establish a 15-minute clean-up session at the end of each workweek.

Encourage Frequent Breaks

Not only are work breaks required by law, but studies have shown that they improve the brainpower of your workers throughout the workday. The more breaks you allow them, the more productive that they will be.

This is especially important for companies that require their workers to do a lot of heavy lifting. Giving them frequent breaks to stretch and go to the bathroom can pay huge dividends. They’ll be less likely to injure themselves while on the job.

However, not everything is about injury risk. The breaks can also improve the mood and mental health of your employees. Giving them frequent breaks will help them stay positive with their coworkers, clients, and management.

Hire Diligent Workers

The safety of your workers is as much their responsibility as it is yours. The only way to ensure their safety is by hiring diligent workers that abide by the rules that you give them.

Be sure to perform due diligence in making sure that the people you hire will have safe work practices. 

Fill them in on different safety ideas that you have in place. Ask them if they have any suggestions, as well as how they plan to prioritize safety in your workplace.

Implement a Reward System

Workplace safety is a team effort. It takes everyone on the staff to ensure a workplace injury never happens during hours of operation.

As such, you should reward your team each time there aren’t any workplace injury reporting. Things such as a company outing or catering lunch one day will serve as a great award for your staff’s safety.

Be sure to communicate the need for reporting injuries when they happen. Don’t let your workers think they can hide injuries just to receive the reward you have for them at the end of every quarter/year.

Use These Work Safety Tips to Your Advantage!

Now that you’ve seen all the different work safety tips that you can use, it’s time to incorporate them into your staff’s day to day plans.

Be sure to read this article on comparing workers’ compensation vs employers’ liability to see which one is right for your company.

For more inquiries, please be sure to reach out via our contact us page and we’ll be happy to assist you further!

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