Sometimes the topic of safety for businesses falls into the same category as the weather, according to the old saying that everyone talks about it but few do anything about it. Fortunately, the situation isn’t that dire, but there are plenty of gaps when it comes to safety in the office, in production facilities, or with company vehicles out on the open road. The beauty of paying close attention to safety is that there’s actually a huge return on the investment of time and money.
Safer workplaces, company vehicles, and manufacturing/processing plants are responsible for far fewer insurance claims and end up saving businesses huge sums year after safe year. Why do so many management teams hand out hefty cash awards for employees who put in a specified number of days without an accident or safety violation? Because workers like that are worth their weight in gold, so management is willing to do just about anything to incentivize safe behavior. Below are four pillars of safety that you can use as a guide to see how your organization is doing. The most successful companies out there understand that it pays big dividends to create and maintain safe offices, plants, and fleets.
Personal Protective Equipment
PPE is about worker gear like helmets, eye protection, gloves, knee pads, proper shoes, and more. Have a checklist based on your industry’s best-practices for PPE and routinely make sure that everyone has exactly the right set of gear for the job they’re doing. In most cases, it’s best to buy and provide PPE at company expense. That way, you can track costs and be absolutely sure that workers are using the right brands, types, and sizes of equipment.
Vehicle Fleets
No matter the size of your fleet, do everything you can to keep driver safety at the maximum level. One of the easiest, but by no means the only way to achieve this goal is to use ELD (electronic logging devices) compliance solutions so that no driver faces the prospect of fatigue or over-work. Not only will you be able to prevent hours of service violations, which can be costly, but you’ll be working to keep your drivers safe from injury. ELD are an economically efficient way to connect all your operations and keep compliance where it should be.
Maintenance and Security
Clean workplaces are usually safer workplaces. But maintenance crews do much more than keep shops, offices, and equipment floors clean and dry. They alert repair teams about malfunctions, leaks, broken equipment, and more. Maintenance workers are management’s eyes and ears for all sorts of potentially unsafe situations. Security personnel play a different but equally important safety role. Not only do they protect on-site personnel from theft, break-ins, and physical assault from trespassers, they also protect the entire facility from vandalism, arson, and sabotage.
Training and Education
One of the softer, but no less essential, components of a safe workplace is education. Hold regular in-house training and educational sessions so all employees can learn about specific ways to make their workplaces safer. If possible, do several full-day seminars per year and make them interactive so workers really learn what’s at stake.
