No-one really wants to have a workplace that’s dangerous. Not only do you want to avoid the chance of your workers suffering injuries or worse, you don’t want the economic issues that comes with sick or injured staff. Although an unsafe workplace is not an efficient one, it’s still very common these days.
If you’re interested, therefore in trying to improve the safety of your employees, look for these five warning signs that your business premises and work practices are dangerous.
Close but No Cigar Burn
When near misses occur, you may feel like breathing a sigh of relief. However, it is also a sign that something is not right. It should get the same attention as an actual accident. Although no one came to harm, it should, just as an accident does, that whatever was being done needs to be made safer. Near misses are only a thing based on good fortune and can’t be depended upon for keeping your workers safe.
Ineffective Staff Safety Training
If you want to know how safe your working environment is, test your employees on safety. If their knowledge and understanding is not as good as it should be, you need to take the blame. Health and safety in the workplace and the training involved needs to be more than just the minimum you must do legally. Assess how much your workforce knows regularly and give the employees refreshers and top-up lessons who are not as knowledgeable. This is especially important in warehouse situations, as staff should be able to spot when pallet racking pins need replacing.
Safety Not Made a Priority
Following on from the above, how much emphasis do you put on safety? Is it the same as talent acquisition, marketing or sales? They should have as much in-depth knowledge as possible about health and safety as they do of other areas of work. You also need to have health and safety goals and targets.
Know the Statistics
It is important to have a clear understanding of how many accidents occur in your business premises every month and if that number is below or above the average for the working year and the industry you operate in. Knowing this is as important as all other figures related to your business.
If you don’t know how much money you are losing, it’s usually a sign you are losing more than you should be. Similarly, if you don’t know how many accidents occur, it’s probably a sign that lots more are happening that should be.
Overworked Staff
Trouble normally occurs in workplaces when workers are pushed to breaking point. If you are piling deadlines on your staff and not giving them adequate time to complete tasks, panic sets in and panic can lead to trouble.
If they perform physical tasks for you, like unloading deliveries and storing things in a warehouse, warehouse staff often feel like they need to choose between completing the property health and safety checks or meeting the goals their employers sets them. If they perform mental tasks, like planning presentations or writing reports, they could end up missing their crucial break time to meet goals and targets.
Therefore, if you are making it so your employees do things to meet your expectations, instead of meeting the relevant safety guidelines, you need to change what you expect of them.