Monthly Archives: November 2018

General Safety Issues

Invest in Health and Safety at Work and Reap the Benefits

Most business owners just focus on productivity and implementing new strategies to make their employees work harder. This approach may be efficient in the short-term but will soon fail. After all, your employees are people, not robots. If you want to invest in your company’s productivity and quality of service, you need to meet your employee’s basic needs. In other words, you need to make sure there are no risks of getting hurt or sick on the job. 

1. Come up with a procedure 

You should always work towards preventing health and safety issues from ever happening, but sometimes that’s simply impossible. In these scenarios, it’s important to have a coherent plan of action. Coming up with a procedure for dealing with these emergencies will help minimize the consequences and return business as usual as soon as possible.

This all implies you should know exactly what to do in cases of fires or other work emergencies. What you’ll do depends on the type of venue your workplace is at and its location. It might be a good idea to ask a professional for help in planning or to hire someone to do that job for you. You can even have a first aid technician on the worksite present at all times.

2. Maintain your facilities

Regardless of where you’re doing your business, you need to pay attention to the state of your facilities. This is especially true if you’re in an old building with a weakened structure. Old pipes, crevices, and spaces between the walls can all be potential risks for injury or disease. This is because pests will have easy access to your workers.Whether we’re talking about an office or a construction site, the consequences could be fatal. Rats can sneak in and chew the wiring important for your work, causing potential short-circuits and fires, while bugs can spread disease and interfere with the work process. Making sure no pests can be found on the worksite will make your employees much more relaxed and productive. They won’t have to stop work just to deal with another issue and you won’t have to spend more money on solving an additional problem.

3. Train and educate your workers

Most injuries are caused by untrained workers who don’t know what they’re doing. So, in order to minimize the risk of injury, you need to battle ignorance. Do this by training new employees and educating old ones. You may have a skilled crew in your hands, but everyone needs a little reminder on safety. Also, make sure to encourage safe behaviour on the job. You can do this by rewarding their good behaviour with a compliment or pat on the back.This way, your workforce won’t be on sick leave or at home, healing from a work injury. You’ll have a strong and healthy crew, ready to take on any project you give them. You’ll also get to avoid potential lawsuits. This all saves you a lot of time, energy, and money while increasing productivity.

4. Get proper and quality equipment

More and more countries are realizing just how effective having proper equipment can be. Take Australia, for example. It’s realized the equipment is the key to preventing injuries and promoting health. If your employees wear good quality equipment necessary for their job, they’re far more likely to do their job well because they’ll have some help.In fact, Aussies take it so seriously that control measures have been implemented to make sure everyone stays safe and healthy. That’s why you’ll find that Australian safety boots, hard hats, high visibility clothing, and safety harnesses meet all the necessary regulations. As a result, you won’t hear that anyone’s gotten sick or injured at work, and productivity is at an all-time high.

5. Maintain the hygiene

Maintaining the hygiene of any work venue is essential from keeping sickness at bay. Disease spreads faster in unclean environments so you need to counter that. Pay special attention to bathroom areas, and kitchens if there are any. If not, make sure the place where your workers take their lunch break is up to standard.

If the circumstances allow it, you can hire a cleaning service to regularly take care of your workplace. This takes the pressure off you while still making sure your employees are working in a clean environment. Finally, you should also encourage your workers to clean up after themselves and educate them on the importance of clean workstations. This way you’ll minimize the risk of disease entirely.

Conclusion

As you can see, there are a few things to pay attention to when it comes to making sure your employees remain safe and healthy. The attitude you have towards their well-being will surely reflect how they feel about you. If your employees respect and like you, they’re far more likely to do their job well and be motivated to give it their all to succeed. We’re confident that all your hard work will pay off in the long run if you follow some or all of the tips above.

About the author: Liam Smith is a young and aspiring Australian blogger with a passion for everything related to home improvement, design and style. He has a B.Sc. in Interior design and is an avid reader.

Uncategorized

10 Good Characteristics of Effective Safety Leader

A disaster-prone, disorganized worksite can indicate one of two things: bad safety leadership or poor safety culture. In most cases, it is both. Crisis management is more than just leadership. It is an intervention and a state of mind. If you are handling crisis and managing a safety program, you are the essential tool for making the worksite function. That being said, organized and effective work requires an effective safety leader.

There are different titles for safety professionals, such as safety experts or managers, or EHS specialists. However, when it comes to safety – they all have the same final goal – to be a leader who promotes safety and keeps people safe.

‘’Everyone can be a safety leader. It can be the shift supervisor, some frontline workers, or the production manager. Whichever you are, you need to possess the following 10 characteristics that come adjacent to the job title.’’ – says Mickey Torres, HR manager at an assignment service.

1.    A Steward of Job Safety

A safety leader is the very first person who brings all attention to job safety. Safety is their priority. Therefore, they consistently and properly wear the equipment and guide people to do the same. A safety leader joins committees and boards that make an example among the workplace, and ensures that every employee is properly informed and trained to use the equipment.

Safety is all about the people. That being said, in addition to ensuring that workers have the proper training to do their job safely, a safety leader cares about the employee’s health. A good leader will hire competent employees, train them and ensure that they are healthy and prepare to do their tasks.

This is where the rules and regulations of a company come in place. Such regulations are the backbone of the safety strategies of the leader, and governments add to this by providing a wide range of safety and health laws and benefits.

2.    Fast Responder

Every leader has to act fast. It is the trait of successful leaders, but the importance of fast reactions is emphasized in the safety business. Employees will raise concerns and at times, their actions will too. With that in mind, a safety leader must respond quickly to the safety concerns and issues raised to protect the employees and correct the deficiencies.

3.    Safety Regulations

You can’t be a true professional unless you build your professional learning curve. A great safety leader is always informed on the current safety regulations. They do this by networking with other professionals, reading materials on safety and regulations, attending conferences, and researching the internet.

There is always something new that comes up on the safety horizon. Whether it is a new strategy to implement safety measures or a new method of safety training, a great safety leader always keeps up.

4.    Meeting Deadlines

If a safety leader leaves open-ended issues, this can lead to disasters. Whether it is employee training or buying safety equipment, a good safety leader does things in a timely measure. They finish everything they start as effectively and efficiently as possible. Whenever possible, they break the big tasks into small chunks and set an allotted timeframe for their completion.

5.    Attention to Details

Issues happen no matter how organized you are or how hard you try to anticipate. As a good safety leader, you need to respond fast to issues and be prepared to handle them. Look for ways to improve the strategies and the process that lead to it. Anticipate issues aggressively before they become serious. Attention to details leads to prevention, which is always better than damage control.

6.    Accountability

You want to be a true leader? If you do, you need to learn to hold people accountable for their actions, including yourself. Great leaders motivate the employees, but part of the motivation process is led by accountability. The tolerance level can remain high, but without accountability, workers won’t be able to improve their work and safety will remain highly endangered.

7.    Solutions

Instead of giving managers a safety problem to solve, a great leader will provide them with a solution. Being a leader means being an expert in the safety field, which is why your manager will expect from you to find a solution for the safety problems. Whether it is something you anticipated or something unexpected, the only way to make an impression and succeed as a safety leader is to take on the problems and create a solution.

8.    Respect

People respect great leaders, but only the ones who respect them back. If you lack respect for the fellow workers, you won’t receive respect from them. It is that simple – people won’t hold you in high regard or consider you a true professional. Respect does not come with the title, no matter how high it is.

9.    Organization

Safety comes side by side with organization. An organized worksite equals safe worksite. One of the greatest traits of a leader is organization, but in this case, it is an essential tool for promoting safety in a workplace. Without it, the place will be a mess: plastics and construction materials without any order, over-stuffed boxes and bins, poor adhering to the safety procedures in the work site, etc. All of this results from poor organization.

10.  Communication

Safety leaders don’t just roll out a different program without discussing it with the workers. They don’t implement safety measures without explaining them to the people who need to work with them. Most importantly, they don’t expect the workers to know the how’s and when’s of safety procedures without no one communicating this with them. If you want the worksite to be a safe place for the people, you must be a good communicator and continuously share safety issues and guidelines with the workers.

Wanting to create a safety culture in a workplace is one thing. Acting on it is a whole other thing. As a safety leader, you must build on the aforementioned skills to make the workplace as safe as it can be.

About the writer

Jennifer Sanders is a writer and an editor from London. She loves sport,  to listen to music, and to communicate with different people. Find Jennifer on Twitter and Facebook.

General Safety Issues

Top 7 Safety Tips To Keep Your Employees Safe From Insects

Workers are exposed to many dangerous things, including the unwelcome insects. Insects can be a nuisance, but they can also be a danger. If your workers are stung by an insect such as a bee or a wasp, or even a hornet, it might not be a big deal. In most cases, bites and stings cause discomfort. However, in other situations, most often with bites from more aggressive insect species, the bite can turn into an allergic reaction and if not treated immediately, lead to even catastrophic results. Every workplace needs to be protected from such occurrences. Something as small as a fire ant can cause a lot of damage and put your employees at great risk. The worksites with birdbaths, buckets of water, old tires, clogged gutters, and other outdoor equipment are at a much higher risk that indoor workspaces. However, the risk is still present everywhere.

‘’It isn’t just the conditions in which employees work. It is also their location. Just think of the West Nile Virus – it killed over fifty people in a single year, which is more than the highest casualty rate recorded in the past.’’ – shares Elisabeth Webber, writer at Brillassignment.co.uk.As a good employer, you want to protect your workers from diseases spread from insect bites, as well as complications that arise as a result of allergies, bacteria, viruses and parasites. The West Nile virus infection is just one of the many, since infected mosquitoes and ticks can carry anything from bacteria to Lyme disease. Statistics say that in a period of nine years between 2001 and 2010, an estimate of 6.8 million people visited emergency rooms in the US for insect sting and bite injuries.

With this in mind, you need to take the right precautions and measures to protect your employees from insects:

Keep them Informed

Before taking any measures to protect the employees, you need to inform them about ways to protect themselves. This is the only way to make sure that employees know what to do when an insect bites or stings them, what to watch for, and what to do to prevent it.

Your task is to discuss the following with them:

  • Appropriate outfit that prevents insect bites, such as long-sleeved shirt and long pants, as well as socks.
  • Use of repellents as stated in the label directions. Repellents can be used on clothing as per the label directions.
  • Working indoors when insects are most active outdoors. For example, mosquitoes are known to be most active at dusk and dawn.

Inspect the Workplace

Your task and that of your employees is to inspect the workplace regularly to rid of breeding grounds as soon as possible. You can train your employees to watch out for this too, and inform you when something like that happens.

Fix and Remove Dangers from the Workplace

Inspecting the workplace includes identifying the leaking buckets, hoses or other things that hold water, and fixing it. It also includes clearing the clogged rained gutters, drilling holes into plant saucers and outdoor containers to prevent water accumulation, keeping pools, ponds and fountains circulating, etc.

To move things father, you can install foggers and mosquito traps, or add mosquito fish to the water sources.

Have Safety Meeting

Have safety meetings as often as possible. On these meetings, your job is to discuss everything related to safety, including insect safety. Let the employees know where you keep the repellant, teach them how to use it, identify the dangerous areas with them, and train them to handle such situations.

Be Prepared

As a safety expert, you need to be the most prepared of them all. This means having epinephrine auto injectors, learn first aid for sting bites, learn how to remove stingers, and have all the equipment necessary to perform a fast, first aid insect bite procedure.

Keep the Work Area as Clean as Possible

Insects can be found in the areas we discussed above, but also in dirty areas. The cleaner you keep the work area, the lower are the chances that insects will come for, let’s say, discarded food.

Teach Employees Insect Bite First Aid

Keeping the employees informed includes this essential point. You aren’t the only one who should know how to react when someone is bitten or stung and has a bad reaction. All your employees should know how to help themselves, as well as co-workers in case you are not there at the moment.

The insect bite first aid for a stinging insect is:

  • Washing the site with water and soap
  • Removing the stinger with a gauze over the area
  • Ice application to reduce the swelling
  • Monitoring the worker to ensure that they don’t have an allergic reaction

Call emergency if the worker shows symptoms

That’s it – the seven preparation tips that will reduce the chances of your employees being stung or bitten by an insect. Remember – this can happen no matter how hard you try, so the most important thing is to be prepared.

About the authorScott Mathews is a professional content writer at recruiting, HR management and work productivity. Scott`s biggest passion is blogging and travelling. He regularly takes part in different conferences and contributes his posts to different websites. Contact him on Facebook and Twitter.