How to Maintain Safety In A Factory Workplace

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!

Business Safety 101: The Risk Areas In Any Organisation

Two of the key focuses of my blog are Financial Literacy/Money and Business/Entrepreneurship. In any business, employee safety is a major concern for production and simply keeping the doors open. What are the risk areas for organizations? The following contributed post is entitled; Business Safety 101: The Risk Areas In Any Organisation.

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Business owners around the world often find the safety measures they have to take within their company to be very frustrating. Even down to the smallest parts of your organisation, you have to keep a constant watch over your employees and customers, ensuring that they are always safe and secure. Of course, though, when you have loads of other work on your plate, it isn’t exactly easy to cover all of the areas which are important. To help you out with this, this post will be exploring some of the major safety concerns which a lot of businesses have to deal with, along with giving you some ideas to make it easier to manage this for yourself.

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Electricals

Everyone knows how dangerous electricity can be, with exposure to this element often causing death or serious injuries. Modern companies are filled with machines which use this resource, though, making it impossible to keep people away from it. Instead, to make sure that everyone is safe, having regular tests conducted on your electricals will often be mandatory. Failing to do this could result in huge fines if you get caught, and even worse consequences if someone actually gets hurt. To help with this, there are a lot of companies out there which will offer subscription services for their tests, making it possible to put the work into someone else’s capable hands.

Obstacles

Wires, boxes, and even wet floors all make for challenging obstacles in a business environment. Unlike at home, where these issues probably won’t matter so much, people in the workplace tend to have other things on their minds. This makes a cable going across the floors go from something to watch out for to a problem which could cost your company a fortune. To get around this, everyone working for you should be trained to put things away properly, along with being basic hazard awareness skills. Of course, along with this, you may have to modify your spaces a little bit to make sure that nothing is in the way.

Vehicles

A lot of companies have to use vehicles to get their work done, with this sort of resource being very useful for a huge range of different jobs. With so much that can go wrong on a machine like this, though, they can end up becoming very dangerous over time, making it crucial that you have regular tests performed to make sure that your fleet is up to standard. Along with this, resources like rubber coatings and safety tape can also be very useful, and you can read more here to figure out just how much they could help you. To make sure that no one is put into the line of fire, your drivers should have the proper training to operate a vehicle for business.

Hygiene

While some people are more fussy than others, there are very strict rules in most places which dictate how clean a business space has to be. When it comes to areas like toilets, this will be very important, with daily cleans being essential, and some companies choosing to go even further than this. Failing to follow the rules in this area could lead to employees or customers suffering with some nasty illnesses. If they are able to prove that your business is at fault, they will be able to take legal action, and this is never good for a growing company. Thankfully, there are loads of cleaning companies around which offer services which can handle all of this for you, ensuring that your place is always at its cleanest.

Air Quality

Hygiene goes beyond cleaning, though. Along with this, you also have to think about the risks which can’t be seen, like gases and pathogens in the air. The latter can be solved with simple air filters which will kill bacteria before they are able to get into the bodies of the people on your property. When it comes to gas, though, you will need to take some extra steps. Detectors can be great when it comes to noticing chemicals like carbon monoxide, giving you an early warning before levels become dangerous. Along with this, it could be worth having machines like your boiler checked to make sure that it isn’t going to start leaking any time soon.

Criminals

There will always be people who you want to keep out of your business, and risk is a big part of this. When it comes to an office, it should only be your employees and a select group of your clients which can gain access. Other people should have to go through an entry procedure, with electronic locks preventing them from gaining access to the wrong parts of the building. In public buildings, like stores, you may need to hire some security team members to keep things safe. Nowadays, there are loads of techy gadgets which can help with this, leaving you with no excuse for having a company which is unsafe.

The Buildings Themselves

When you’re focused on all of the small areas of business safety, it can be easy to ignore the areas which are right in your face. You buildings, for example, can pose a tremendous risk to employees and customers, and they don’t often make it obvious when they are having problems. Having a ceiling collapse could hurt people very badly, with loads of issues like this being common in older structures. To solve this, it will be worth having a surveyor to check the place every couple of years. While they may not find anything, they won’t miss anything, either, keeping your place free from risk.

This sort of field is one which a lot of business owners resent. It feels bad having to spend money just in case something goes wrong, and a lot of the rules you have to follow seem over the top. In reality, though, keeping people safe is a serious business. Some parts of the world pose more risks than others, but it will be worth doing as much as possible wherever you are.

When Enough Is Enough: Knowing When It’s Time To Quit Your Job

Buffer

“Knowing when to quit your job isn’t always straightforward. You need the money, after all. But if your health is at risk, or if you know you aren’t where you are supposed to be, then you do need to consider the option. Life is too short to stay in a job that isn’t benefiting you.”

Buffer

The first principle of my blog is Creating Ecosystems of Success, and a key focus is Career Discussions. In any job, it’s critical to know when to leave. The reasons vary and it’s different for everyone based upon: personal health, promotion potential, and whether or not it’s still a good mutual fit. How do you know when to quit your job? The following contributed post is entitled, When Enough Is Enough: Knowing When It’s Time To Quit Your Job.

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Knowing when to quit your job isn’t always straightforward. You need the money, after all. But if your health is at risk, or if you know you aren’t where you are supposed to be, then you do need to consider the option. Life is too short to stay in a job that isn’t benefiting you.

If anything we say in this article relates to you, then start to plan a career move. It could be the best thing you do today, especially if you are reading this now, feeling utterly miserable because of the job you are currently in.

These are some of the reasons why you should say “enough is enough” and call it quits on your current position.

1. You wake up with a feeling of dread every morning

Most us resent the intrusion of the alarm clock at some point in our lives. The thought of going into work doesn’t always provoke happy feelings. But if you feel dread at going into work every morning, then something is clearly wrong. It could be for one of any number of reasons – your boss is an idiot, your colleagues are bullies, the job role holds no meaning for you – and if you can’t change the situation that is causing you to feel dread in the morning, then getting out of there could be the best thing you can do.

2. Your workplace is a health and safety nightmare

Your employer’s legal duty is to care for your safety and well-being while at work. But if that safety is compromised in any way, perhaps because you haven’t been given the correct training to handle a dangerous job role, or your employer is cutting costs and corners within safety measures, then you need to think about your health and safety. You may have legal protection should an accident befall you at work – check here to find out more – but do you really want to work in a place where safety measures are not placed as a priority? It shows lack of care in you, as the employee, for starters. Moving into a new career could be a literal life-saver!

3. Your job role isn’t safe

If involuntary redundancies are common in your company, then it may be in your best interest to find another job before you find yourself on the unemployment line. This is especially true if the industry in which you work isn’t considered safe anymore. We are heading into a world without employees, where robots and machines are literally taking over some job roles, so if you work within a particular career type, such as any of those listed here, then a career move could well be in order before an autonomous drone shuffles into your position. There are other job types that will survive the robot invasion, including anything that is primarily people-oriented, such as teaching, healthcare, and social work, so consider your options if a career move is the right thing for you.

4) There’s no new opportunities for you

If there’s no career advancement available for you, it might be best to look elsewhere for your livelihood. Once upon a time this might have been your dream job, but now it’s a dead end position that doesn’t provide you with any benefits.

That’s not a desirable position to be in for multiple reasons. Say one day you have to enlist the aid of a criminal defense lawyer; your current salary may not allow you to afford one for more than a couple days. Without new opportunities in the form of a pay rise or promotion, this kind of uncertainty will always hang over your shoulders.

So, is it time to call it quits on your job? If your physical and mental health is in danger because of the role you are in, or if you are feeling insecure because of the threat of being made redundant, then yes, you are probably right to move on. Figure out your next move, do what you need to do to secure a new job role, and then say “enough is enough” to the position you are currently in.