When it comes to safety concerns in the workplace, the list goes on and on. There are dozens of variables to keep track of at all times, and this can be an exhausting endeavor for any manager or site owner. However, approaching safety concerns in the workplace by prioritizing the most common issues first will help keep your place of work as safe as possible for the majority of your workers.
Here’s a quick review of some of the most crucial workplace safety concerns and how to address them.
There are some simple, crucial essential safety measures that can be attended to in order to provide excellent baseline safety protection for your workers. Many of these are so-called “common sense” rules, but with common sense not being that common at all, it’s important to spell out these rules as explicitly as possible. This will go far to prevent the most common types of workplace accidents and injuries.
Absolute essential health and safety procedures include stressing personal safety responsibility. Workers need to know that they’re responsible for keeping their workspaces clean and uncluttered to prevent injuries related to slipping on wet floors or tripping over debris. Working safely at height is another “common sense” set of rules as well, ensuring that workers remain personally responsible for following safety standards designed to prevent injuries from falls, such as the proper use of safety harnesses.
Once you’ve established a baseline of workplace safety rules that are designed to diminish the threat of slips, trips, and falls, it’s time to address more site-specific safety concerns in the workplace. This is most obviously dependent on the specific industry sector your company inhabits, as well as the type of work being done at a specific site; being in the bookseller industry can mean not just having to deal with safety concerns in a retail establishment but could also mean dealing with the safety concerns inherent in warehousing, shipping, and receiving as well, for example.
While the specific tasks and activities that require accompanying workplace safety best practices applied are variable, the level of specificity of these best practices is not. The most effective workplace safety rules tend to be granular, covering all aspects of a specific job or industry in ways that might seem like a waste of time at first glance. However, any loss of productivity due to workers taking their time in conducting tasks safely is surely made up for by avoiding massive work disruptions due to catastrophic or even minor damage to equipment or injuries to staff.
Safety concerns in the workplace are valid, simply because accidents happen eventually. No matter how exhaustive you are when it comes to implementing safety protocols and procedures and how diligently you train your staff, it’s impossible to a 100% completely injury-free workplace. However, taking the right steps to diminish the possibility of accidents and injuries occurring is the closest we can ever get to such a goal.
This is why any effort made to enforce workplace safety is a step in the right direction. The more effort one makes, the better your results will be – especially if the steps you take are implemented effectively. Remember: do your best to codify “common sense” safety rules, follow up with safety protocols specific to your industry or site, and always ensure your equipment has been maintained correctly and that your employees are trained properly at all times. Keep all of these goals in mind and your own levels of workplace safety will be high indeed.