Two of the key focuses of my blog are Financial Literacy/Money and Business/Entrepreneurship. If you own a factory business, any number of things can happen as your workers are carrying out their tasks. It’s thus important to proactively think about what safety measures and protocols you can put in place. The following contributed post is thus entitled, How to Maintain Safety In A Factory Workplace.
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It’s important that every business owner takes steps to ensure their worksite is as safe as possible, but it’s more important in certain workspaces than others. For example, if you have a factory, then you’ll need to think even more carefully about your safety standards and practices, because the potential for an injury to occur is higher than in, say, a traditional office environment. Below, we take a look at some essential safety tips that’ll help to keep you, your employees, and site visitors safe.
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Identify Weaknesses
If you’re going to find ways to make your business safe, first you need to know what the dangers are. It’s worthwhile hiring a safety expert to perform a check on your site, as they’ll see things that you don’t. Once you’ve got a clear image of the practices that are “accidents waiting to happen,” you’ll be able to navigate your route to a safer worksite. This will be especially important if you’ve never performed a check like this before.
Staff Training
You can come up with all the safety initiatives in the world, but if your staff don’t know how to perform them properly, then they won’t be as effective as they could or should be. There are plenty of employees who get annoyed by the prospect of a safety training day, but it’s important that you’re able to motivate everyone enough to take it seriously. To ensure that the information your employees receive sinks in, try to find a more interactive way of getting the message across. Being walked through some slideshow presentations is not going to capture their attention in any meaningful way.
Employee Feedback
Of course, you shouldn’t just transmit the safety standards to your employees. It should be a conversation. After all, they’re the ones who are “on the front line, ”every day, most likely in a way that you never are. As such, there’ll have a much better understanding of any safety vulnerabilities the site might have than you will. To ensure that this important information doesn’t stay locked in your staff members’ heads, create a policy of open conversation. This is crucial when it comes to making sure no safety stones have been left unturned, and is also just a generally positive environment to create in your workplace.
Updated Practices
Your safety rules and practices shouldn’t be set in stone. They should be updated and adapted as needs demand. If you have a new way of operating or invest in a new machine, make sure you’re developing a safety code of conduct that’s specific to those things. This is where some of your employee feedback will come in handy, too. As a general rule, you should be reviewing your safety methods every few months or so, even if nothing about the way the factory has changed since the last review. It’s an ongoing process that will develop and morph over time.
The Surrounding Area
It’s important to keep in mind the area that surrounds your factory as well as its interior. Through the process of manufacturing, you might contaminate the soil or water that surrounds your worksite, which can lead to health complications. These may be different from the incidents that commonly occur in a factory setting, but should be treated just as seriously. If contamination happens at your site, then take a look at https://hepure.com/product-list/feroxzero-valent-iron-powders/, and begin the environmental remediation process. It’s not something that will necessarily pose an immediate threat to your business or employees, but it’s something that needs to be managed.
Common Injuries
The bulk of the injuries that happen in your factory setting will be minor. They’ll be things like everyday slips and falls, or cuts. However, even though they might be comparatively minor, you’ll need to take any incident seriously. Have an incident book so you can jot down what happened and why, even if all that was required was a band-aid. By recording everything that happens, you will, over time, begin to get a snapshot of why these incidents occur, which you can then use to adjust your safety procedures. While talking about common injuries, it’s important to note that slips and falls will be the most common injury; you can limit how often they occur by getting a floor that doesn’t lend itself to slips, and encourage your employees to wear footwear that is appropriate for your type of flooring.
Break Times
It’s rarely the machine that is dangerous, but the person using it. The majority of incidents are caused by human error. But in fact, even the human errors are created by a human error: not giving staff members enough downtime during the day. There’s an upper limit to how long a human can concentrate before getting tired. And it’s usually when a person is tired that an accident happens. Even when you have busy deadlines, make sure you’re giving your staff enough breaks. It’s usually only when a person stops working for a few moments that they realize how tired they are – by enforcing breaks, an accident may be avoided.
First aid Training
As we mentioned earlier, the bulk of incidents that happen on your worksite will be small. However, there will be times when something more serious happens. During these times, it’ll be useful if you have someone on the team who has had first aid training. It’s worthwhile offering this type of training to your employees; you may wish to offer an incentive to anyone who signs up. It might just prevent something tragic from happening.
An Orderly Space
While it’s important to have safety practices for all the machines and the factory as a whole, sometimes the biggest impact you can have it simply keeping the space tidy and orderly. If there are too many things on the floor, then it’ll only be a matter of time before an accident happens. There should be nothing on the floor that doesn’t positively need to be there. A tidy space is a safe space!
