As a manager, supervisor or team leader, it is your job to ensure that all employees enjoy a safe working environment. It's easy to employ a staff member, pay them a salary for work completed and think everything will be alright, but it just takes one small incident to leave your business in serious financial trouble. Yes you probably have good insurance in place to cover any claims against you should a staff member injure themselves on the job, but you still have an excess to pay and should you not have adequate cover, you are responsible to pay the balance.
Reducing the Risk of Injury at Work
The best money saving advice I can give you when it comes to liability claims is that being prepared is better than having a cure, so to speak. Basically if you take health and safety at work seriously, you have a complete risk assessment which you review and update regularly and you are constantly improving your strategy for a safer working environment, you can save the business a fortune in the long run.
Don't be under the impression that health and safety at work is only important for those risky jobs, those companies where staff members are faced with danger on a daily basis. Offices can be dangerous too if you don't have the right regulations and procedures in place.
A while ago, I worked for a company where the director, another manager and I all worked on a mezzanine level overlooking the office and although being perched above the crowd was a great feeling, the mezzanine level was dangerous. After performing a risk assessment we were amazed at how many incidents could happen by standing on this level from falling over the railings and falling down the stairs to the mezzanine collapsing and injuring the staff below. It is not until you sit down and really start thinking about the potential risks in your surrounding environment that you can have a handle on health and safety in your workplace.
Your Risk Assessment
Every company should have a risk assessment and the only way to put this assessment in place is to walk around your office, factory or building and step by step take what could happen at every corner into account. Now this may sound long winded and the thought of spending the day wandering about the property making notes is boring, but in the long run you will be thankful.
As you enter each office area, each doorway and each stairwell, think of the risks these areas pose to employees and what could go wrong. A risk assessment is imperative to ensure good health and safety at work and if you know where the risks are then you can prepare staff, helping to avoid any accidents which may occur.
Staff Training in Health and Safety at Work
Sadly you can’t just perform a risk assessment and expect staff to know the dangers without providing them with adequate risk assessment training and information about how to use it.
With proper staff training on health and safety at work on a regular basis you can dramatically reduce the risk of an accident and breathe easily knowing that the financial dangers to your business have also been avoided. It only takes one accident in the workplace to drain your businesses bank account. Health and safety at work is essential in every workplace whether you are an office or a factory, an industrial kitchen or a construction site.