Why Health and Safety Should Never be Overlooked

November 14, 2019

Your business is something that you are no doubt very proud of. If it is something that you have built up from nothing yourself then you certainly would not want to lose this in the event of an accident or a fire in your workplace. Here are some of the areas that you should put energy into in order to keep yourself, your staff, and your customers safe at all times. 

Insurance Is Vital

While we don’t like to think about the worst happening, it does happen often. Companies have fires all of the time. In many cases, the fire is small and it is easily dealt with. But once in a while, there is a major fire that costs entire premises and lives. In this scenario, you certainly would not want anything like this becoming your financial undoing. For that reason, you need to be sure that you have the right level of public liability cover in case anything happens. , 

Making The Workplace Safe

There are many problems that you may face when it comes to keeping your workplace tidy and hazard-free. Broken or damaged flooring could become a trip hazard, so you may want to look at having quality factory floors put down before an accident occurs. In addition to this, make sure that you and your team are not leaving boxes or items lying around where someone could fall over them. 

Carry Out Risk Assessments

It is important that you regularly assess all of the risks in your premises. Knowing where you have areas of concern will mean that you can plan to make changes. Identifying risks that just require your team to be made aware of a situation will prompt you to have this conversation with your team. Be sure and get them to sign to say that they have received this training.  

Test Your Equipment

All of your health and safety equipment needs to be tested regularly. This means setting your fire alarms off to make sure that the bells are sounding. You should also have a daily inspection of your fire extinguishers to check that the pin is still in place and that the valve is showing the correct pressure. 

Check your emergency lighting once a month and you will be able to see if any lights or batteries need to be replaced. It may seem a bit much to have to do this since they are never used, you would not want to find yourself in a situation where you need them, and they are not there. 

Train Your Staff

Do not underestimate the importance and value of training your staff members to deal with health and safety problems. You need to make sure that they get this training from the first day that they enter your business. Fire safety training including the evacuation procedure should be given before anything else. 

You should review all of your health and safety training periodically, and have your team repeat sections every year.

Mark Asquith

That British podcast guy, Mark is co-founder of Captivate.fm, the world's only growth-oriented podcast host. A Harvard, TEDx, Podcast Movement and Podfest speaker (amongst many more!), he's a wildly approachable Brit and Star Wars/DC Comics geek.

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