The Big Work Safety Threats We Should All Know
If you run a business, then it’s your responsibility to make sure that everyone who works there, be they employee or contractor, can work in safe conditions without undue fear for their safety. You might not see any problem in your work environment, but do you really know what risks to look out for? Here, we’re going to look at some of the biggest risk factors you should start to become more aware of.
Slips, trips, and falls
It might seem like a relatively benign thing to happen. People fall all the time and don’t suffer any great injury. However, people also injure themselves from falls, all the time. Most slips, trips, and falls are caused by an inability to maintain safe and clear walkways in the work environment. Ensure that any designated walkways are marked off and that it’s made a rule that there should be no obstructions in them at any time.
Working from heights
If there is an opportunity for someone in the workplace to fall from a great height, that increases the risk of serious injury even more. To that end, make sure you have effective measures for safety at heights. It doesn’t matter if this involves having secure means to climb up to the top shelf of a warehouse or rapid post systems to keep people standing at edges safe. You can’t risk someone falling at such a distance.
Transportation accidents
Typically most common in any workplaces that involve working with vehicles, such as construction, warehouses, and the like. This accounts for not only vehicle collisions, but things like machinery colliding into people, of having a part of their body squeezed or compressed by that equipment. Teaching total workplace vehicle safety to anyone operating those vehicles and regular repetition of key lessons is essential in reducing the chances that a serious vehicular injury happens under your watch.
Musculoskeletal injuries
It might not be as dramatic as the other examples named above, but simply working in an uncomfortable work environment can be a major health risk. Without the right ergonomic furniture to support them and the opportunity to get up and stretch their legs, employees can be a lot more prone to injuries like repetitive strain injury, carpal tunnel, and even chronic back pain.
Fire and explosions
While not as common as any of the other risk factors mentioned above, the damage caused by fire risks in the workplace can be so extensive that the costs of them can way eclipse what you might otherwise payout for other injuries. The single best way to approach this risk is to perform fire risk audits in the workplace, know what your hazards are, and have a comprehensive policy to deal with them.
If you want to be as conscious of risk as possible in your work environment, then it’s on you to develop a new approach to safety. Safety audits, working with safety officers, and being more strict on protective measures can all help you cut the costs of accidents in the workplace.
