The fact is that no one wants to get hurt while at work, and no one wants to be responsible for someone else getting hurt.
However, the truth is that accidents do happen in the workplace, and people do get hurt, particularly in workplaces where there is a higher risk of injury, such as within the manufacturing industry. Sometimes accidents happen, and when they do the consequences can be serious, although the majority of the time thankfully they’re not.
However, that doesn’t mean that you don’t want to try and ensure that you prevent all accidents. After all, every time there is an accident, there’s a risk that it will end with serious consequences for both the person affected and the company involved. That’s why it’s so important that when it comes to running a business within the manufacturing industry, that you take health and safety seriously from the start.
Bearing that in mind, below is a guide to better understanding the risks that come with manufacturing and how you can mitigate them by implementing effective health and safety practices.
Invest in health and safety surveys
You can perform as many risk assessments as you like, and you should regularly do, but there’s always a chance that you will miss something important. That’s why it’s so vital when it comes to your manufacturing business, that you are willing to invest in professional health and safety surveys. The fact is that by doing so, you can ensure that any potential health and safety issues that you and your team may not spot can be quickly brought to light before they cause an accident or injury to occur.
By employing a specialist to perform a detailed audit of your company, you can ensure that when it comes to health and safety regulations and practices, you are as clued up as possible. Unfortunately, you may not notice problems with the safety procedures you have in place, or if a certain system that your team uses to work could cause a serious accident, whereas a professional health and safety specialist will notice these things and make sure you are aware of them.
Make health and safety training mandatory
If you want to reduce the risk you have of being sued by an injured employee, it is vital that you put the right safety processes in place to protect your entire team. What does this mean? It means taking steps to ensure that when it comes to health and safety, your team members are clued up on what they can do to prevent accidents from occurring. The key to doing this is training.
As a rule of thumb, if you are serious about making workplace accidents and injuries a thing of the past, it’s vital that you implement mandatory employee health and safety training. That way, you can make sure that before any new team members begin working for you, they have undergone training to help them stay safe while working. It is important, as it is your responsibility as an employer, to ensure that you give your team members everything that they need to stay safe while at work. If you fail to do this, you could be held accountable for any accidents or injuries that occur.
Take part in safety conferences
In addition to ensuring that your team members undergo adequate health and safety training, it’s also vital that you know how to keep your team safe. That’s why it’s so important to consider taking part in industry-specific health and safety conferences, such as the safety conference in 2018. If you want to ensure that your team members can stay safe while on the job, it’s vital that you take steps to learn more about workplace health and safety.
Attending an industry-specific conference could help you to do that. As while you are at the conference, not only will you learn about all of the newest inventions in health and safety and methods for staying safe while at work, you will also learn about any new risk factors that have developed. It’s impossible to stay abreast of everything that’s going on in the industry, which is why attending these kinds of things is so important.
Understand the risks
As a business owner, it’s your job to understand the risks that come with running a manufacturing business. When it comes to keeping your team members safe, it’s essential that you understand what risks there are and how they can pose a threat to your team members and what it takes for you to keep them safe. It’s important to make sure that you spend plenty of time researching, educating yourself and reading up about the risks that your team members deal with on a daily basis so that you are able to keep the risk of accidents and injuries as low as possible.
Part of the issue with workplace accidents and injuries is the fact that in order to be able to mitigate risk, you need to understand and assess what these risks are. That’s why it is vital that you make time to learn as much about your business’s process and systems, and how you can significantly reduce the chance of any serious accidents taking place. It won’t always be easy getting to grips with this, but if you take the time to invest in health and safety, it is possible to do so.
In manufacturing, there is nothing more crucial than health and safety. If you want to make sure that your business reduces the risk of any serious safety issues leading to accidents and injuries, it’s vital that you take health and safety seriously from the moment when you first launch your business. By taking note of the tips and advice above, you can make doing so much easier and less stressful, and you can increase the chance that your business will be able to avoid accidents altogether, or at least, any major accidents.