Promoting Safety in the Workplace: What Companies Can Do

You’ve worked hard to build a strong workplace safety culture. You do your best to make sure that your employees know what’s expected of them.

But at the end of the day, you know you could do more. You want to take further steps toward promoting safety in the workplace so that your managers and employees alike can show up to work without fear of accidents.

It’s important to remember that a safe workplace is a process, not a destination. It requires consistent dedication on your part to prioritize safety above all. Here are three things you can do to make your workplace safer.

Run a Risk Assessment and Make a Plan

The first step in creating a safer workplace is knowing where you need to improve. For that, you need to run a risk assessment.

A risk assessment is just an assessment of what might reasonably cause harm to your workers and deciding whether you’re taking reasonable steps to prevent harm. Chances are, you’re already taking some steps to keep your employees safe. The risk assessment helps you decide whether you need to take additional steps. It’s a useful exercise, and you’re required to do it under OSHA guidelines.

Once you know your risks, you can develop a plan to prevent them. It’s useful to check OSHA regulations and best practices when doing this as some risks have certain protocols that must be followed.

Staff Training

Once you have a safety plan in place, you can prepare your staff to follow it. To do that, you’ll need to offer periodic staff safety meetings and training.

Your employees are the ones most exposed to risk throughout the day. That means they also carry a heavy burden of responsibility when it comes to preventing hazards. The single easiest way to make sure they know your safety procedures is to educate them.

Even experienced employees should undergo periodic training, especially if your safety standards have changed in the interim.

On both sides (employer and employee), it’s not enough to assume that common sense will prevail. If you need something to make the job easier, say so. Put it in a training. Make sure that everyone knows what it is and how to do it.

Keep a Clean House

After a safety plan and well-trained employees, the next best way to promote safety in the workplace is to keep a clean house.

Take slip, trip, and fall accidents, for example. Fall accidents account for 8 million hospital visits each year, with slips and trips accounting for 1 million of them.

What causes people to slip or trip? A lot of things. A cluttered work floor. An unclean floor. A slippery surface. Even small hazards can take a nasty turn that you don’t expect. These kinds of hazards are easily avoided if your workplace is clean and secure.

You should also make sure that you have clear signage and labels on everything. Again, don’t assume that common sense will prevail - some people are careless, especially in a familiar environment. Even the most safety-minded worker can forget sometimes.

Need Help Promoting Safety in the Workplace?

Promoting safety in the workplace is an ongoing process. No matter how safe you are right now, regulations are always changing. There’s always room to be better than you were before. And if your employees don’t see that you’re dedicated to safety, they won’t be dedicated to it either.

If you need more tips to build a safer workplace, check out our blog for beneficial resources.