When you first start out in business, you tend to take control of absolutely everything yourself. You don’t typically have the budget to take on help from others and you also want to maintain control over the establishment of your business. When you work alone, every decision falls to you. You get to determine what direction your business takes, whether you go ahead with any process, and what exactly you will be providing the consumer market with. This is fine. As you actually look towards launching your business, you may need a little help with specialist areas. You are likely to outsource web design, product photography, and maybe even marketing. This means that you don’t have to take on the responsibility of being an employer and the work gets done. Perfect! However, a point will come, at some point, when you really do have to consider taking on more permanent staff members. If your products are a hit and orders start rolling in, you really are going to have to accept ongoing help and this means committing to offering workers contracted hours and protecting them while they are working these hours. But how can you achieve this? Well, the first step is offering them a safe work space!
Why Provide Employees with a Safe Work space?
Put simply, you are legally obliged to provide your employees with a safe work space. If you don’t and someone becomes sick or injured as a result, you’ll begin receiving contact from injury attorneys and you’ll probably end up having to fork out compensation. On top of this, you should acknowledge that your employees are the backbone of your business. The more time that they have to take off for recovery, the more work you will fall behind on, and you will start seeing detrimental effects on your profits.
Conduct Risk Assessments
You should conduct risk assessments for any work that you ask your employees to carry out. This will determine whether there is any potential danger in anything that they are required to do. If there is risk, you can remove the risk!
Fit Appropriate Signs
If there are parts of the workplace that pose a danger, but cannot be changed, you need to fit appropriate signage. This could be something like a “mind your head” sign, or a “mind the step” sign. Signs indicating the nearest fire exits should also be fitted. If possible, opt for luminescent ones that will still highlight the way if the power cuts out.
Train Staff
Make sure that members of staff working on each shift are training in first aid and fire safety. This will ensure that there is someone there with sufficient knowledge to help if anything does go wrong with other employees or customers in the commercial space.
Ensure your team has access to the appropriate equipment
If your team does any work that could be physically demanding or comes with potential risk, then investing in the right equipment is vital. As well as safety gear, such as PPE, this also counts things like harnesses and lifting equipment in warehouses to ensure that your team can handle their work as safely and securely as possible. Training to use this equipment is just as vital.
Following the above advice should help you to create a truly safe space for your employees to work in. If you haven’t implemented the steps yet, make sure to as soon as possible.
I wish more employers would make safety like this a feature of how they run things. I’ve been in or known about places where it wasn’t and it really impacted overall morale. Knowing you work in a place that takes safety seriously is one part of having employees that feel valued. Great post!