There are plenty of things that can make your business slip up and fall away from success. None more so that an actual slip & fall incident, or any other problem that comes about from poor health and safety regulations. Whether you’re running a small company with three employees, or a big one with way more, you need to pay attention to health & safety.

Why? There are multiple reasons I can list here, but the most important one is that it’s a simple matter of law. You’re legally required to provide a safe working environment for your employees. Furthermore, you need to ensure your premises are safe for anyone else that walks into them. This could be customers walking into a store, a delivery person walking into your office, and so on. Chemicals should be stored in containers like those here, electrics should be maintained and PAT tested, fire controls should be in place and machinery should be locked and secure. If you fail to provide a safe workplace, and someone gets injured on your premises, they can sue your business and make it suffer. Depending on how good their lawyer is, this could be curtains for a small company.

Already, you can see why it’s vital you pay close attention to your workplace health & safety. This is without considering the additional impact it can have on your company. When you provide a safe working environment, it usually makes it easier for your employees to work. Therefore, they can get more work done, in a faster amount of time. As a result, your company could see productivity benefits.

By now you’re all probably thinking the same question; what advice do you have for health and safety in the workplace? Luckily for you, I’m about to make your life easier by providing a few simple tips I think will help you out.

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Warning Signs

A really basic piece of advice is to have warning signs dotted around your business. This is the easiest way to escape a health & safety lawsuit issue if someone hurts themselves. For example, let’s say the floor has just been cleaned and is wet. You need a warning sign showing everyone the floor is wet, so they know to be careful. If no warning sign is present, they can sue you for negligence because you’ve made no attempt to make the wetness obvious, so they don’t know the floor is wet.

Depending on your area of business, you’ll need more warning signs. Office-based businesses or retail companies are most likely only going to need wet floor signs and maybe a few other warning signs. If you operate a business that uses a lot of equipment, you’ll need signs for every piece of equipment detailing the potential dangers and hazards present.

All this really does is draw more attention to dangers in your business. This way, you’ve clearly made a conscious effort to show employees that potential hazards are present. So, if they still hurt themselves, it’s not your fault because you’ve told them it was dangerous.

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Provide Suitable Workplace Clothing Where Necessary

There are many examples of businesses that need to provide safe workplace clothing for their employees. This is because the work being carried out presents potential health & safety risks to their employees. A few examples might include; warehouses, construction businesses, courier services, medical companies, businesses dealing with chemicals, etc. All of these things include work that could harm the employees in some way shape or form.

As a consequence, you have to ensure your employees are fully suited and booted in the right clothing. If you browse around Steel Blue, you’ll see a range of safety work boots that can help protect employees that are often lifting heavy equipment. With the correct boots, their toes and feet are protected if something falls on them. This is handy for construction staff, warehouse workers, couriers, and so on. Then, you have things like safety helmets for businesses that work in dangerous areas where debris can fall on people’s heads – most notably the construction industry. Furthermore, you need to think about things like gloves or face masks for medical businesses or companies that handle dangerous things with their hands and need the extra layer of protection.

The bottom line is; think about your area of work and whether or not there are dangers to your employees. If you feel there are potential threats, ensure you provide them with suitable clothing to protect against them. This isn’t going to apply to everyone, if you have a typical office-based business then no safety clothing is needed!

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Conduct Regular Inspections

As soon as you move into your business premises, you must conduct a full health & safety inspection. Look all over the place for potential hazards and areas that might concern you. You can identify problems and put them right before you bring in your employees and properly set up shop.

But, as well as this, you must conduct regular inspections to keep on top of things. You never know when issues can start to occur, so it’s best you’re always inspecting. As soon as something pops up, you can identify it and sort it out right away.

This applies to all businesses across all different industries.

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Train Your Employees Properly

Finally, you can turn to your employees to help improve health & safety in the workplace. Train them and teach them how to use things and how to act at work. This is especially important for companies using lots of different equipment. If your employees don’t know how to use things, they’ll be at a greater risk of hurting themselves in some way.

As part of the training, you can teach them about the potential hazards in your business and how to avoid them as well.

Combine all of these tips, and you’ll guarantee your workplace is a lot safer for everyone. Training your employees and providing them with the correct clothing goes a long way to keeping them safe at work. Conducting regular inspections and providing warning signs helps prevent health & safety problems when other people visit your premises too. Now, you can avoid slipping up and damaging your business! Don’t let health & safety issues cause you harm, they’re such a basic thing to take care of.