All businesses should be taking action to improve health and safety standards in the workplace. The costs of failing in health and safety can be high. Not only could this cost your business financially in terms of loss of production and employee absences but it could also cost lives. To help you get started here are just six easy steps to save lives and cut costs in the workplace using health and safety guidelines.
1. Assess Your Risk
The most important part of complying with health and safety is to understand health and safety in your workplace. You can find out lots of information about setting up your own workplace risk assessment online and from the Institute of Occupation Safety and Health (IOSH). If you are unsure about how to perform a risk assessment then call in an independent health and safety expert.
2. Manage Health and Safety
You do need to stay on top of health and safety. This issue will need to be managed to ensure measures are in place to reduce risk and also so that everyone is complying with these measures. Training managers and supervisors in health and safety is a good investment and will help to ensure compliance now and into the future.
- IOSH Managing Safely
- NEBOSH General Certificate in Occupational Health and Safety
- NVQ Health and Safety
3. Communicate and Share
It is not just managers and supervisor that need health and safety training. All employees in the workplace should be trained in basic health and safety. This can include one-to-one training, staff handbooks, pamphlets, posters and so on. Communicating health and safety issues with staff is essential. This will ensure everyone is following health and safety measures and complying with the law.
4. Avoid False Economy
Cutting corners can cost lives. Don’t be tempted to boost your bottom line by scrimping on health and safety. This could increase the risks of accidents and injuries and leave your business wide open to escalating costs. Cutting corners in the workplace is a false economy so you do need to invest in health and safety and ensure you are complying with the relevant legalisation.
5. Set Targets
You need some kind of goals for your health and safety plan. This helps to sustain the momentum with health and safety improvements and ensure everyone knows which direction to pull in. You don’t have to make improvements to health and safety all in one go. This could be very disruptive to the business and drain resources. Instead assess risks carefully and tackle those that are the highest first. In your health and safety plan you can then outline when and how you will be dealing with the less urgent improvements in the future.
6. Insure Against Risk
As a business it is important to have financial back-up in place in case the worst happens. Employers liability insurance can provide cover should accidents or injury occur in the workplace. This could provide financial support for costs such as legal fees, personal injury claims and so on.