Health and safety in the workplace are multi-faceted considerations. You want to give your staff the health and safety equipment necessary to help them avoid serious injury, but more importantly, you want to avoid the circumstances that lead to accidents in the first place.

In this article, we look at how to maintain good health and safety in the workplace.

Safety inspections

Routine safety inspections of work sites are a major way to ensure that accidents are prevented. In keeping with the medical wisdom that it’s always easiest to catch something before it becomes a major problem, inspections of the facility itself, as well as of the health and safety equipment can help make sure that everything is how it is supposed to be.

It’s important to keep in mind that conditions can change at the drop of a hat. The work site will constantly be influenced by the previous day’s activity. Health and safety equipment will degrade over time the more people use them. The most dependable way to keep everything as it should be is to make inspections regular. Even very small errors can have massive consequences, putting a major emphasis on preventative action.

Routine training

Regular training is an equally important component of workplace safety. Make sure your staff understands not just how to use the work materials, but also that they know their way around health and safety equipment.

Sure. They’re trained, of course. All of our employees go through weeks of training before we give them any level of autonomy. What else do you want from us?

Onboarding is definitely an important element of workplace safety. Unfortunately though, if your training efforts begin and end at the point of hire, you’re leaving your entire workplace open to dangerous human error variables.

People forget training over time. They fall into habits and get used to cutting corners. Not in malicious ways, but just because that’s how they get used to doing things. By making training regular you accomplish several things.

• Refresh their understanding: The more you review procedural and health and safety equipment expectations, the faster the more ingrained these things will become in your staff’s mind. After the sixth, seventh, and eighth training, it will become second nature.
• Demonstrate you take it seriously:  In most workplaces, there are “rules,” i.e things that are in the guidebook but never enforced, and then there are rules. Things that everyone on the staff knows they need to do if they want to keep their job. To maintain a safe working environment it’s important to establish health and safety equipment, along with other safety procedures as being firmly in the latter category.
• Keep them up to date: It’s also important to keep in mind that things change. It was only in the 1970s that builders stopped putting asbestos in everything. And in the not-so-distant past, no one had made a connection between smoking and lung cancer. As regulations change and the conventional wisdom shifts, it’s important to regularly study and update your understanding of what is expected. Regular training help keeps everyone up to date on the latest recommendations.

Your staff probably won’t love being constantly bombarded with regular training, but it is for their own good. Try to make the sessions short, fun, and to the point. And remember to always emphasize the importance of health and safety equipment.

Safety equipment

We’ve already touched on the importance of health and safety equipment in this article, but it’s important to have a careful understanding of what they actually accomplish. Health and safety products aren’t just there to prevent major injuries resulting from accidents—though they certainly do accomplish that.

They are also there to help mitigate the regular wear and tear of the job. Labor-heavy careers can have a debilitating effect on the human body. These aches and pains may not be immediately apparent, but ten,  twenty, thirty years in they begin to rear their ugly heads.

Labor-heavy jobs are strongly associated with high instances of chronic back and joint pain. They can also result in hearing loss, joint damage, and permanent nerve damage. Regularly wearing health and safety equipment can help reduce these risks.

For example, impact-resistant gloves not only protect your hands in the event of a heavy falling object but also absorb the vibrations of power tools—a subtle but significant force that can result in serious cases of joint and nerve damage.

Power tools are also extremely loud. Use them all day and you will constantly be exposed to more than the generally recommended levels of sound. Ear protection can help reduce the risks of hearing loss.

Make sure your staff understands the importance of health and safety equipment, not just as it relates to accident mitigation, but also in how it can help secure better long-term health outcomes.

Mindful scheduling practices

Granted, mindful scheduling can be hard. Employers all over the country are continuing to deal with staffing shortages, which means some people will pretty much have to make schedules based strictly on availability.

Nevertheless, if you can plan shifts to avoid employee burnout it will make a big difference not just in your staff’s workplace satisfaction, but also in the overall safety of the job site.

Stress and burnout statistically lead to diminished job performance. In an office setting, that might mean making more typos than usual. In an industrial setting, it could mean making mistakes with a power tool…

The stakes are higher. Employers should do everything they can to help their employees feel happy and satisfied at their workplace. That doesn’t mean you need to grant wishes like a genie. Just make practical, humane decisions about how you manage your staff.

Healthy lifestyle

Finally, healthy lifestyles, including diet, exercise, and healthy sleeping patterns, can also help contribute to an overall safer work environment. Healthy lifestyles promote energy, happiness, and concentration levels—all of which are factors that can produce better job performance.

Think of ways you can encourage team members to live healthier lifestyles. Some workplaces do this by providing healthy lunches or free gym memberships. Others calibrate schedules to allow for more employee downtime.

Find the solution that works for you and make an effort to help your staff live the healthiest possible lifestyle.