10 Workplace Safety Tips for your Small Business
In an effort to help you keep your small business health benefits for yourself, rather than having to spend them on unwanted workplace accidents, we would like to present our top-10 workplace safety tips. Read on to learn how to save yourself a lot of pain and money!
Design your work area with safety in mind.
You should start planning for safety right away. Position machines, stage materials, and set up product flow in a way that emphasizing safety and efficiency.
Cleanliness is key.
Clean work areas are more productive, and also much safer. Whether your workplace is an office building or a factory floor, you should keep things neat and tidy so that hazards are clearly visible. You’ll get a productivity boost, and spend less of your small business medical insurance funds on injury recovery.
Get your employees involved.
Nobody will have a more intimate understanding of the safety concerns of a given job or work environment than the people who are hired to work there every day. Gather input from employees and follow their suggestions rather than relying on static industry standards that may be less relevant to your specific needs.
Give clear instructions.
Training and daily tasks should be clear and concise, with the process clearly outlined for the employee. Documenting your work processes allows you to review all potential safety hazards that may arise throughout the day, and address them. This also eliminates the chances of an employee “winging it” on a job with improper training or equipment, which is where most accidents occur.
Focus on the most common problem areas.
Though it is tempting to focus your workplace safety efforts on averting catastrophic violations, it is actually the smaller and more frequent safety hazards that cause the greatest number of injuries and small business medical insurance spending each year. Strained backs from using poor lifting technique, cuts from exposed edges, or slips resulting from improper footwear are examples of small but common problems that should be addressed in your safety plan.
Encourage open reporting and communication for safety concerns.
Everybody in the office or workplace should be encouraged to report safety concerns to their superiors. This not only gives you many more sets of eyes, but encourages a sense of open communication, trust, and community action within the workplace.
