Businesses that want to be successful and productive must pay close attention to health and safety policies and procedures. Health and safety failures can be dangerous, expensive and bad for reputation, for all of these reasons certain preventative measures need to be taken. There are several ways that you can look to create a safer and healthier workplace.
1 . Wellness Platforms
First up, there are a number of wellness platforms aimed at businesses; using these platforms, employers can prioritize the mental health of all staff.
- Wellable: Wellable provides health guidance and wellness challenges, combining on-site sessions, digital seminars, and app content. It’s suitable for companies of all sizes and is used to improve employee health plans across the globe.
- Optimity: Optimity is a staff wellness and employee success program, designed to boost engagement by 77-98%. The platform uses the concept of ‘micro-habit coaching’ to provide a unique wellness experience.
- GoViva: This is a corporate wellbeing tool, designed to improve physical and mental wellness. At the same time, GoVida provides insights on staff productivity and engagement. The tool offers goal setting, incentives, a mindful suite, and activity challenges.
With a great wellness program you’ll incentive staff and boost productivity.
- Frequent Risk Analysis
You must analyze any risks within your workplace by performing frequent assessments. A risk assessment means identifying the hazards that exist or might appear at your place of work. The idea is to determine which risks may harm visitors or staff. A risk assessment tends to focus on the following areas:
- Potential Hazards: such hazards might include fire safety, manual handling, hazardous substances, or any risk factors for violence, stress or repetitive strain injuries.
- Risk associated tasks: potential tasks include maintenance work, handling chemicals, or public-facing tasks.
- Organizational risks: ensuring the correct procedures are followed about lone working, shift patterns, management techniques, staffing policies etc.
- Workplace Safety Apps
There are a few workplace safety apps which can help you to support your health and safety policies.
- Tap Into Safety: The Tap Into Safety app provides workplace safety courses and app content to improve health and safety in the workplace.
- Ergonomics: The ergonomics app can help you to ensure that all desks are set up ergonomically. Here you’ll also find content that encourages regular stretching breaks, to improve health.
- Ensure The Correct PPE
Ensuring that your employees have the correct PPE is highly essential. Depending on your line of work, this could include protective clothing, protective headgear, or headphones for noisy environments. The COVID-19 pandemic has seen a shift in PPE policies, and some environments are now adding masks and face shields to their PPE. The decision to add extra PPE should be implemented at the discretion of the company, or government authorities (if appropriate).
- Drug & Alcohol Testing Policies
To create a safe and healthy workplace, it’s advisable to educate yourself on the current drug testing laws. You may need to update your drug and alcohol testing policies. Employees and supervisors should all be trained to carry out reasonable suspicion assessments and to understand the correct procedures for drugs and alcohol testing. Drugs and alcohol accidents at work are dangerous, as well as costly. Even minor alcohol misuse, resulting in hangovers and absenteeism, can affect your bottom line.
- A Healthy Set Up
To create a healthier workplace, it’s essential to consider your amenities, set-up and design. EPA data teaches us about the poor quality of indoor air, stating that, ‘the concentrations of some pollutants are often 2 to 5 times higher than typical outdoor concentrations.’ With these stats in mind, it’s worth using air purifiers and plants to create a healthier office environment. Both can help to remove toxins, allergens and chemicals. As well as this, ensure that your offices have plenty of natural light and ventilation.
- Health & Safety Training
Simple but important, employees must have regular health and safety training so that they know what’s expected of them in every situation. Staff should be encouraged to learn the rules of the health and safety manual and refer back to it as they carry out their everyday tasks. Any updates to your health and safety manual should be communicated in a team meeting, to ensure that everyone is on the same page.
Once you’ve taken steps to improve your health and safety, it’s well worth reviewing these systems every once in a while. It’s also useful to gather staff feedback; your staff may have insights about the causes of bottlenecks and how to make improvements.