8 Tips To Help Make Your Business Safer
Being safe at work is something that's often taken for granted. There's an expectation that throughout any given day or evening, everyone will walk away from their place of business exactly in the form they arrived, not a scratch on them. In reality, however, employees' ability to remain uninjured requires adopting a safety-centric culture, particularly in high-risk industries where accidents tend to be more common.
The alternative can be devastating. According to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, nearly 4,700 people were killed on the job in 2014, the latest year for which data is available. That equates to 13 deaths every day, all due to serious injuries sustained on the jobsite.
As you might expect, some professions see more injuries, illnesses and fatalities than others. For example, two years ago, nearly 1 in 5 fatal accidents were in construction, according to OSHA's statistics.
Workplace injury rate down 67% since 1970
While even one death or serious injury on the job is one too many, accidents on the whole are on the decline. In the past 45-plus years, for instance, workplace fatality rates have fallen by 66% and occupational injuries have decreased by 67%.
A big reason for this are businesses - and, by extension, employees - being committed to doing the things necessary to remain free from harm.
The following are a few strategies you as a business owner can take to reduce the chances workers have to go on the injured list or worse:
· Install visual reminders on walls and highly visible areas that urge workers to exercise caution.
· Require annual or semi-annual training for procedures that could result in injury.
· Attach incentives to safety programs that reward employees for their awareness.
· Establish a "safety CEO" who is charged with monitoring accidents and injuries and how they can be avoided.
· Flag incidents where workers are careless in their conduct.
· Penalize employees for failure to follow safety rules and regulations.
· Hire professional staff to demonstrate how a tool or piece of machinery is used.
· Perform an annual or semi-annual safety audit.
Safety and risk are not mutually exclusive terms. Several industries are more prone to accidents than others, but they can be offset with the right strategies and tools.