In recent years, health and safety in the workplace has become a hot topic and for businesses that can sometimes be overwhelming and completely out of your skill set. But the truth is, health and safety is there for a good reason – to protect you, your employees, your customers and any visitors to your office and business premises from injuring themselves. Here we look at five tips to help you make sure that your business is meeting health and safety requirements.

Appoint a designated health and safety officer
One of the first steps any business owner should take to make sure that their business is health and safety compliant is to appoint a designated member of staff to manage all of your company’s health and safety activities. How you go about this is wholly dependent on the scale and the things that your company does. In a small, calm office you may be able to give the task to an existing employee without adding to their workload too significantly. On a large construction site, you will need someone full time who knows what they are doing and has all the appropriate and up to date training. It is also important that the health and safety officer is across workplace safety regulations such as OSHA guidelines. It is also a good idea to do an audit of your health and safety supplies to ensure you have everything your staff need, including the right type of gloves suited to your workplace. Unigloves have a fantastic range to take care of this for you, and they also have a glove audit tool and helpful product finder on their website to ensure you are getting exactly what you need!

Only use machinery and equipment from regulated and reputable companies
While you might tick all the boxes when it comes to health and safety, not everyone does. If you need to purchase or hire equipment or machinery to undertake tasks within your company, make sure you use a company that is safe, regulated, and reputable, like Freo Group. You can go about your day feeling much more confident that the equipment that you hire is safe and up to the job.

Conduct a risk assessment
One of the most prominent elements of your business’s health and safety compliance will be to carry out a detailed risk assessment of the workplace and any tasks that might pose a risk. A risk assessment is where your company works to identify any potential risks to health and safety, and then subsequently develops control measures that can be put into place to mitigate those identified risks. It is actually a LOT easier than it sounds! The first step in carrying out a risk assessment is to identify all potential hazards. Think about all of the activities, processes, and substances that you use that could injure or harm employees, customers, or any other members of the public. It is also a good execricse to review your Incident and Accident reports to check if there are any recurring themes and address those as well.

 Health and safety management might sound like a complicated and expensive process, but the truth is identifying and mitigating workplace hazards is essential! We can all agree tt is in your businesses’ best interest to ensure that everyone you work is kept safe  at all times. 

TDP x