Preventing Accidents In Your Commercial Property
When you run a small business, you tend to start out alone, taking control of all of the tasks entailed in keeping everything up and running. However, as you begin to grow and expand, chances are that you are going to have to take on staff to complete all necessary work. Now, becoming an employer is a huge responsibility, and there are various areas that you need to focus on to keep your employees content. However, an area that you should lay particular focus on is your employee’s health, safety, and wellbeing. It is your responsibility to ensure that they are safe in the workplace. Here’s a little more information on the subject!
The Importance of Health and Safety
If staff become injured or unwell while at work, there are numerous negative implications for you and your business as well as for them. Unwell staff have to take time off work. This will reduce your business’ output and can lead to your business either falling behind in its operation, other staff having to take on extra responsibility (reducing happiness in the workplace) or you having to take on temporary staff to fulfill existing staff’s workload (meaning you will have to pay more employees than you intended to). If staff have experience injury or sickness at your hands, they might also pair up with lawyers to create a court case against you where they may attempt to claim compensation, which will prove extremely costly for you and can damage your professional reputation. You can learn more about this by visiting AitkenLaw.com.
Reducing Risk in the Workplace
There are various steps that you can take to reduce the risk of accidents occurring in the workplace. Here are just a few to consider.
Conduct Regular Risk Assessments
In the workplace, something is a “risk” is when there’s a significant probability that it will happen. Conducting risk assessments will help you to identify potentially dangerous or hazardous aspects of your business.
Carry Out Risk Control
Once you are aware of potential risks, you can take steps to reduce them. This can include training employees to deal with inevitable risks and to prevent unnecessary risks from establishing themselves. All employees should undertake training before being put to work and you should offer additional training when anyone is given more responsibility or new tasks to carry out. You should ensure that you get staff to sign paperwork confirming that they have received the training that you have given to them for the purposes of legal protection.
Record Workplace Incidents
Any accidents or incidents that do occur should be recorded and reported. Have an incident book ready for staff to fill in.
As you can see, it’s paramount that you take active measures to prevent accidents from occuring in your commercial property. Not only for your staff’s sake, but for your own sake too!
