Keeping Your Employees Safe in the Workplace

As an employer, you are someone that is responsible for the wellbeing and safety of your employees. Depending on the industry in which you work, it may be a really obvious thing. If your team have to deal with chemicals or handle machinery, making sure that they are trained and educated with what they need to do is really important and something you will have already done. But for some employers, they think that just pointing out where the fire exits are and where the escape route is, is enough. There is no much more to think about when it comes to employee safety and wellbeing, especially in the modern world that we are living in.

Being able to have a team that is safe and cared for helps the business to keep moving, as well as making sure that legally you are covered too. So if you’re not too sure what to be doing, other than the obvious, here are some things to help you.

Assess Environment

There is more than just fire exits in a warehouse or an office. Thinking about things like electrical sockets, for example, can be a good thing to make sure that they are safe, as well as checking the quality of the air in the office. Are all alarms working, especially things like fire alarms or carbon monoxide detectors? Small checks can make a big difference.

Risk Assessments

If you have a team that will be doing a variety of different things in or outside of the office, then it is a good idea to make sure that what they are doing is risk assessed. It is a small thing but can eliminate risks of the activity, no matter how small you might think they may be. It helps to protect you and show that you have the concerns of the staff member at heart. Things can still happen, though, as you can’t account for other people’s actions. Which is why having some legal counsel and insurance is a must. Say you work in logistics or have people out in trucks for deliveries; you’d need someone with well rounded trucking expert opinions to help if there is a situation that arises. Hopefully it won’t be needed, but it is best to cover all of your bases.

Know Your Team

When you know who you are working with you can look out for some behaviours that you might find a little strange. For example, if you look at people that have committed cybercrime or fraud before, many friends and family will say that they didn’t seem like ’the type’ to do this kind of thing. So if you do spot unusual behavior, it helps to protect your business.

Not only that, but knowing your team and knowing what they are going through can help to keep them safe. An abusive partner or ex could come to the office wanting to see them. If you didn’t know any different, you would probably give them access. But if you know that things have gone sour, then you are in a position to keep your employee safe.