American adults spend a vast amount of time at the workplace. Spending as much as 40 hours a week at the office can take its toll. Policies and procedures are there to keep everybody safe and create the best working environment possible.
Due to the recent pandemic, most people have had to work from home. As more staff return back to the office, now is the perfect time to reconsider your workplace safety policy.
You’ve made the decision to reinvent your workplace safety policy, but where do you begin? There are certain steps you can take and best practices to adhere to so that you can ensure that no stone gets left unturned and meets all your company’s needs.
Read on below to find out everything you need to know!
Employee Inclusion
The first step is to make sure you include your employees in the whole process. This will help your employees understand that health and safety are the responsibility of everyone. Nobody wants to hold someone accountable, but if employees feel included then they can ensure adherence.
Some of the steps you can take to include employees are:
- Ask for feedback
- Tell employees about future safety inspections, and always keep them in the loop.
- Assign daily safety inspections to some employees
- Hold employees accountable by including a health and safety evaluation in their performance review.
Hazards in the Workplace
The next thing you must do is identify any hazards in the workplace that could potentially cause any injury to your employees. At the same time, review previous incidents of injury and illness as a good starting point. You can find all this information in the following:
- First aid logs should be in storage
- Compensation reports
- Employee complaints
When you do this look for a few common trends in the injuries that have occurred. This will give you a good idea of what needs to be identified and then rectified to improve your safety standards.
Finally, with all this information compiled, conduct a site inspection of each and every hazard location. Use a checklist, with the employees, and evaluate each location. At the same time, you can identify any improvements and alterations that need to take place.
Training Employees
The last and final step is to train all your employees in the new workplace safety policy and procedures.
This can include taking them through the hazards and doing, for example, a fire drill once every 6 months so that any new employees can be familiar with the procedures, know where the first aid kits are kept, and where the fire extinguishers are.
Construct an Efficient Workplace Safety Policy
The goal of implementing a workplace safety policy is to cover you and the employees. If a sound policy is set in place, future injuries can be avoided and your company will be known as a safe, happy working environment.
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