Any business, no matter what it is, has a chance of encountering an injured employee. Of course, this may not be as prominent in a marshmallow shop as it might be in a busy inner-city kitchen or factory, but that’s not to say the risk is ever at 0%. However, while 0% chance of injury is never a goal we can achieve, it is one we must invest everything to try and get closer to. Even one injury in our workplace is absolutely unacceptable, and no worthwhile boss found anywhere up or down the country will state anything differently.
That being said, it’s one thing to state an aim and another to follow it. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, but that saying is incomplete. An ounce of prevention is certainly more valuable, but it hardly prevents the pound of cure from being useful, particularly if all else fails and you do experience that aforementioned injury.
As far as this is concerned, it’s important for you and your business to know how to operate from here. We would offer the following advice:
Suspend Activities
Suspend the workplace activities that have contributed to this issue. If someone has been injured by a machine in your factory, there’s every chance that this could happen to someone else. It’s important to prevent this risk while you try to get to the bottom of what has happened, or to try your best to gain some real answers as you scour the CCTV.
This will also give the staff members who may have witnessed the incident to recover, or to take the adequate break from work they may have needed. In the interim, using outsourced services to help you fulfill this function may help your operational processes continue. Also, after evidence has been collected, deep clean the area to ensure it is sterilized and go about inspecting every square inch of the injury site. This may lend you further understanding that is important to keep.
Follow Up With The Employee
Follow up with the employee to the extent that you can. There’s every chance that they may need some recovery time or may simply not wish to speak to you or a representative of your firm, as a life-changing event can often be disorienting and leave them quite angry with you. Extend your deepest sympathies, and ensure that whatever coverage they have is well applied from a medical perspective. While it’s important to ensure your lawyers are present and following the case, do not let this supersede decency and the willingness to open true lines of communication. After all, their health is the largest priority.
Repair & Maintenance
It will be immediately important to ensure that you can resolve the problems that may have caused the issue in the first place. For example, if a piece of equipment caused someone to experience an injury despite being well maintained or despite practical protocols being followed, this shows that the issue may been more pernicious than you would expect.
It’s essential to ensure that your machinery is up to standard, that your safety protocols are revised to prevent this issue from happening again, that staff are trained further before committing to the same task, that your insurance premiums are once again revised, and, most importantly, that you use highly-professional services such as Puwer Inspections to ensure your machinery compliance up to the specified code.
You simply cannot allow this to happen again. If this means tearing up half of your factory or workplace and reinstalling it with new, better equipment, or if it means more stringent safety measures bordering on over-surety, or it means granting your staff more breaks and an easier reporting of issues to their manager, it’s important to do that. Practical changes spell results, provided they are carefully aided by deep research.
Provide HR Support
HR support is an important part of an injury, not only to the injured and their families, but also to those in the office who may have seen the accident. It can be shocking and quite disorienting for employees to see their friend become harmed, even if the statistical likelihood of this happening to them is as near zero as possible. This way you can soothe the trauma around the office, measure the health of your other employees, and potentially even see if you can gain apparent insight into what happened.
With this advice, we hope you can turn a bad situation into a lesson for future workplace measures.
