The health and safety of your employees and customers should be up there with your top priorities. So often businesses think about how to get the job done as quickly as possible, or where they can save money, or maximize sales. Your business should, however, have a stringent health and safety policy that will help to ensure you are not putting at risk your own life, and the lives of anyone who steps foot on your premises.
Get Advice Sooner Rather Than Later
If you don’t have a health and safety policy already, you should draw one up as soon as possible. You may need to get the help of a professional agency who can advise you on the things that you need to have in place. You may be able to get help from the fire service, or the local authorities. There are also many health and safety companies out there whose business is supporting firms such as yours.
Draw Up Risk Assessments
There are many potential risks within any workplace. This could be related to fire or a work-related accident. Everything has the potential to become a hazard under the wrong conditions. It is your responsibility to assess the risk, and grade the likelihood of this happening. Once you have identified a possible hazard, you must ensure you have safeguards in place to manage it. This may mean deciding that something needs immediate maintenance, or that staff need training on dealing with a certain situation.
You will need to regularly review your risk assessments and check that there haven’t been any changes since the last check. If anything on the site has deteriorated and represents a risk, it should be dealt with accordingly. If anything has changed within the workplace, or you have a new method of work, measuring the potential for hazard is important.
Creating Regular Health And Safety Procedures
There are several procedures that you may need to put in place in your company. These should include regular checks to your fire safety equipment, such as alarms, fire extinguishers, sprinklers, and emergency lighting. There may be site-specific checks that you need to make such as pallet racking safety inspections, assessing trip hazards, or checking the safekeeping of hazardous chemicals.
Create and keep records that demonstrate that you are often undertaking tests. Making sure you are checking these procedures is vital. In the event of an accident, having these procedures in place can ensure you are not liable. Having tight systems in place demonstrates that you have done everything within your power to mitigate the risk.
Team Training
Carry out regular team training which covers what to do in the event of a fire in the workplace. There needs to be an agreed meeting place, and all staff should be walked through the potential routes to getting there.
Your team should be taught the importance of safe use of knives, stepladders, forklifts, as well as how to store or handle heavy or bulky items.
