Ensuring Consistent Health and Safety Standards In Your Company
How safe is your workplace?
Keeping consistent health and safety standards for workers and visitors to your business is vital. As part of your OSHA compliance, there are minimum levels you must maintain at all times. And contrary to popular belief, this applies to all businesses, not just specific industries.
When you are starting a new business, and you will have people at your place of work frequently, be it offices, restaurants, retail, or pretty much any premises people can frequent, you need to ensure their safety at all times. Therefore, be sure to have efficient practices in place to reduce the risk of harm to everyone.
Safety Equipment
If you are on a construction site or working around heavy machinery, providing everyone with the applicable safety equipment is a must, from hard hats and ear defenders to PPE protective eyewear and gloves. If they are at risk from any damage from external factors, you must provide them with adequate protection.
Traffic Measures
If there are many vehicles on the premises or you have a car park attached to your business, then it can be an option to provide traffic calming measures and implement speed restrictions to ensure safety. For example, have clear walking zones indicated for pedestrians and traffic management systems and speed limits in place. To help you advertise these measures, you can purchase equipment from Traffic Logix to help you implement any changes.
Training
While you cannot train your customers on how to behave when on your premises, you can train your employees on the best safety practices ensuring they are on top of customer safety at all times. From thorough training to allow them to carry out their job roles with reduced risk, best handling procedures for products or items that require extra caution, and identifying risks to others on the premises such as trip hazards, spills, damages, etc. It is a collective effort, and everyone needs to be aware of the risks and their responsibilities.
If you are working with food, make sure you are registered with your local state and adhere to all the latest food safety regulations and hygiene standards, and all of your staff are aware of them.
Maintenance and Checks
You should ensure you have a full training and maintenance schedule set for all employees. All frequently used equipment is well maintained and in good working order to eliminate the risk of breakdowns or injury from using machinery or equipment that isn’t up to standard.
It might be worthwhile to employ a staff member to constantly assess your safety standards and practices and provide continuous support and training where needed and help you implement new changes and updates as required for new policies. For training new staff members or acting on feedback from employees and customers to improve your safety standards.
For any business, the health and safety of everyone should be a top priority to allow you to run your business efficiently and effectively without any incidents.
