As an employer, you have the legal and moral obligation to ensure the safety of your employees and anyone that enters your workplace. You can, however, only achieve this by creating a safety system that is legally-compliant, efficient, and auditable for functionality.
Many business managers, however, fail to create the necessary systems because they assume it would be too expensive or complex.
As you will learn here, the creation and maintenance of a health and safety system is neither expensive nor complicated.
Create a reliable and consistent system
Creating an unreliable system is a waste of resource.
To avoid this, ensure that you have assessed the workplace and determined the present dangers. Also learn about all the health and safety regulations that apply to your business.
You can then create a skeleton for your safety management system based on this knowledge. This will ensure the system consistently address the safety needs of your business within the legal guidelines even if changes and improvements are made in future.
Train employees about health and safety management
Thousands of accidents and injuries would be avoided if the workers were trained on their health and safety. Admittedly, there are some incidents that training can’t prevent but even in such cases, training can reduce the extent of damage and injuries significantly.
Employee training should therefore be a part of your health and safety management strategy.
Some of the fundamentals they need to be trained on include:
- The various risks that they are prone to
- Measures that have been taken to protect them from the possible dangers
- What they should do when emergencies occur
- Up-to-date details of regulations about workplace health and safety
Unlike what many business owners assume, training employees about health and safety is not only inexpensive but also profitable.
Adopt technology
Technology has been integrated in virtually every aspect of the workplace. In various departments, technology has improved efficiency and productivity of both the organization and individual workers.
There is therefore every reason to use technology in your workplace’s health and safety management.
Some of the areas you can use technology in improving the safety of your workplace include:
- Automated fire and smoke detection systems and alarms
- Digitization of employee training and training records
- Assessment of workplace systems for risks and points of weakness
- Evaluation of the safety management system for compliance with regulations
- Improved communication to alert response teams when employees are in danger especially those that work in remote locations
Conclusion
It is practically impossible to create a flawless health and safety management system but we strive to go as close as possible. Technology, for one, has allowed us to attain levels of safety that were initially unimaginable.
Much more can be achieved in terms of safety by combining technology, local and international guidelines, and expert opinions. Your employees can also be a source of great insight into what needs to be done to improve the current system.
