Health And
Safety
Health And Safety Is Biggest
Company Concerns
Health and
safety are a primary concern in almost any work
place. Although workplace safety procedures vary from place to
place, there are certain universal health and safety guidelines
that you should follow.
I have been a health safety compliance expert for years, and
have studied this in detail. The thing that matters most isn't
whether this or that rule is in place, but whether there is a
culture of safety in the workplace.
If safety and health guidelines are respected and put above
everything else, people won't get hurt. If, on the other hand,
people take a lax attitude towards environmental safety,
accidents will happen – sometimes with tragic results.
The most important thing is to keep health safety guidelines
in the forefront of company concerns. This means that you don't
only deal with health and safety issues once a year when you
are getting accreditation reviews by the government.
You have to deal with it all the time. If you have a large
enough company to afford it, you should appoint a workplace
safety expert. If you don't, you can add it on as a peripheral
to someone's job description.
Take one of your other workers who wants to make some extra
money and offer to appoint him health and
safety compliance chair in exchange for a bonus. Many
workers will jump at the chance.
Make sure that every month or so, you have a meeting that
deals with health and
safety issues. It doesn't matter exactly
how often you do it, as long as you do it regularly.
In some workplaces, you have to deal with issues of safety
almost every week. In other workplaces, once every other month
is probably good enough. The most important thing is to
schedule it and post it and allow other workers to voice their
concerns at the meeting. That way, you can start to develop a
culture of workplace health & safety.
Rather than berating your workers for being forgetful, make
sure that they always have access to the guidelines. Put them
in a place where everyone can see them and periodically quiz
workers on them. Everyone should know the rules, whether it is
food safety or proper maintenance and operation of
machines.
Most importantly, make sure that you post
health and safety
rules around the workplace. Whether you train your workers once
or you train them a hundred times, someone will forget the
guidelines at some point.
It could save a life.
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