If you want to expand your business or achieve higher productivity in the workplace. You must make workplace safety an integral part of your organizational culture.
I’m not a safety engineer, however I have the highest number of safety near-miss and safety hazards reports among my electrical maintenance team. It all about safety culture. I note the hazards around me better than my team.
Safety engineers in the organization that I work for, respect my safety culture and experience very well. And I never let them down.
In this article, we will discuss workplace safety, common hazards or accidents, safety strategies, and prevention of accidents at the workplace.
Definition of Workplace Safety
The limitation of all those elements and risks that cause accidents, harms, and negative outcomes at the workplace is called workplace safety. In other words, it is the combination of policies, behaviors, and a set of precautions at the workplace to limit accidents, hazards, & any other type of misshape in the work environment.
Why Workplace Safety Is Important For An Organization?
Everyone in an organization wants to work in a safe environment. While for both employees and employer’s health and safety is the key factor. It is the duty of an organization to provide a safe and protected workplace to its employees. And it is one of the basic human rights. If an accident happens with an employee loss is immeasurable and intolerable.
Similarly, it is important in the case of productivity. Because workplace safety directly affects the well-being of an organization’s workforce. That directly affects the quality of productivity and output of any business. So the more an organization focus on the safety of employees the more revenue the organization will achieve.
Read Also Is Safety Important For Workers Or Employers?
Types of Workplace Hazards
Accidents are common in every workplace environment. However, organizations always try to minimize them by adopting safety precautions. Here we are discussing some major workplace hazards and the safety precautions to minimize accidents and ensure workplace safety.
- The first workplace hazard is electrical hazard in the organization. Hidden electrical outlets and unsafe installation can cause accidents. Even safe outlets and good condition electrical devices may be one of the serious hazards in the work environment.
How come a good condition electrical device is hazard? The direct answer is working unsafe with or around these devices is a real hazard. Only well trained authorized persons are allowed to make maintenance for electrical devices. Also safety rules and precautions should be taken into account and no shortcuts regarding electrical safety.
I have written a detailed articleس about electrical hazard, you can check them:
- What is electrical hazard?
- How to Avoid Electrical hazard at Home?
- Electrical Safety at Construction Sites
- The second one is fire. Fire is a result of another hazard, It can be caused due to electrical accessories, water boilers and even cigarettes. Fire hazard is one of the big hazards in workplace. So a good fire fighting system should be established in day one of the organization life.
- The 3rd hazard is any other accident that causes harm to the worker at the workplace like trip, hands, eyes and back bone injury. All these hazards may exist as a result of lake of safety culture.
How to Ensure Workplace Safety In An Organization?
We can ensure the safety of workers and assets by taking safety measures. Some important steps are discussed below.
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Training of Employees
Employees are the first line of protection against and possible workplace hazard. Safety culture should be part of work day. It is mandatory to train all the workers to prevent workplace injury and to control hazards.
The employee may be given full access to the safety materials. They must be authorized to take safety precautions in any unforeseen situation. A monthly or annual exercise will keep the employees stick to the plan.
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Reward on adopting safe behavior
The workers must be appreciated and rewarded if they follow the Safety rules according to Sop’s. Similarly, if someone doesn’t follow, He/ She must be given a warning or deal with punishment.
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Use of Labels and warning Signs
A quick way to communicate important information is the use of labels and signs. It is necessary to install signs and labels for ensuring workplace safety. For examples, any electrical panels should be labelled with a warning sign telling workers that only authorized persons are allowed to work with this panel.
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Keep things clean
Another important factor to ensure safety is to keep the workplace clean. Also, conduct regular inspections to check for potential dangers. If the workplace has a lot of obstacles it could cause injuries, trip hazard or even in case of emergency and evacuation situations it could double the hazard.
- Implement the safety protocols To ensure workplace safety, the safety protocols must be followed from the start. It will be a positive point if the organization joins hands with occupational clinicians. Also, the organization must call regular meetings on safety
- PPE (personal protective equipment) Each job has its own needs of PPE. Whatever the required PPE, it should be available for everyone at workplace. PPE like Safety shoes, glasses, gloves, insulated gloves for electrical work etc.
Read my Detailed articles about PPE:
