4 Employee Health and Safety Tips for Business Owners

Do you take the health and safety of your employees seriously?

If you don’t, or you do the bare minimum, you’re not just putting your employee’s lives at risk. You’re also jeopardizing your entire organization.

An unsafe and unhealthy workplace is a recipe for disaster. On-the-job injuries can leave your employees needing long-term healthcare and your business will have to compensate them accordingly. Your organizational productivity will also decline.

Employee health and safety should always come top in your list of priorities.

Don’t know how to go about making the workplace healthier and safer? We’ve got you!

Continue reading for a couple of effective tips.

1. Conduct a Workplace Health and Safety Assessment

It’s almost impossible to know the state of your workplace’s health and safety if you’ve never conducted a professional assessment. Even if no employee has ever gotten injured or fallen ill as a result of a poor workplace environment, it doesn’t mean the place is perfect.

Hire a health and safety assessment expert to evaluate your workplace and identify potential health and safety hazards. This professional will also provide recommendations you can use to eliminate or contain those hazards.

2. Don’t Overlook the Little Things

There are little things that go a long way in improving the health and safety of a workplace.

For instance, erecting proper signage, such as “wet floor” or “cleaning in progress” might seem like a mundane thing to do, but it can prevent serious injuries or even death. People have lost their lives from slipping and falling on wet floors.

If you’re a manufacturing plant, it’s essential to label hazardous chemicals, hot liquids, and other job hazards. Don’t assume that your employees will know the hazards because they’ve worked in that environment for a long time.

3. Hire Quality Employees

It’s easy to focus on cleaning up the physical environment on your premises and forget that even your employees can contribute to an unsafe environment.

Let’s say you have employees who use illegal drugs. Such workers are a risk because they can bully, harass, or fight other team members or even ignore basic health and safety procedures.

To eliminate such a problem, ensure you’re hiring quality employees. Conduct thorough criminal and drug background checks before hiring anyone. You can also use drug test kits to perform routine checks and ensure none of your current employees is using prohibited drugs.

4. Train Your Employees

It’s not enough to just hire quality employees. If they don’t know much about workplace health and safety, they might not be in a good position to keep themselves safe.

You should always train your employees on health and safety matters. Bring in training experts who can take them through important safety procedures in your workplace.

The more an employee is trained, the more aware they’ll be of their surroundings. They’ll be able to detect hazards and take the right preventative measures.

Put Employee Health and Safety First

Investing in employee health and safety might not be your priority if you’re running on a shoestring budget, but it should. There are no two ways about it. Having read this guide, you now know some of the steps you can take to improve your workplace health and safety.

Keep tabs on our blog for more informative workplace tips and insights.