Most people assume that their office workspaces are safe working environments. After all, they aren't a health and safety risk like construction sites or mines, for example. However, thousands of accidents occur in ordinary offices across the country each year.
As a responsible business leader, the safety and wellbeing of your employees is paramount, and you want to take actionable steps to minimize the risk of injury or worse to your teams.
Take a look at the following tips and suggestions to help you make your office a safer working environment for your staff:
Have A Clean Desk Policy
The first thing you can do is ensure that your business has a clean desk policy as part of its workplace manual. Doing so gives each team member some responsibility for ensuring they contribute towards having a safer working environment.
Untidy desks don't just look unsightly; they can also be dangerous. For example, loose wires and paperwork can become trip and slip hazards, and breakable items on the desk like glass could slide onto the floor from an accidental paperwork avalanche!
Conduct Regular Risk Assessments
Another way to make your workplace a safer environment for you and your employees is by conducting regular risk assessments. They help you identify issues like exposed electrical wiring, damaged flooring that could become a trip hazard, and rooms with poor lighting.
When thinking about workers comp vs personal injury claims, business leaders must realize the type of compensation claim makes no difference; it's all about preventing such claims from getting lodged in the first place!
Risk assessments help diminish and even eradicate such claims from employees.
Improve Ventilation
Each room in your office environment must have plenty of ventilation for everyone. Did you know that many people develop occupational allergies as a direct result of poor workplace ventilation?
The causes of such allergies are chemicals used for cleaning, the materials used in the manufacture of office furniture, and even fresh paint applied to walls and ceilings.
If your office space suffers from notoriously poor ventilation, take steps to improve the situation if you don't want your workers to be ill more often than not!
Upgrade Your Lighting
It should come as no surprise that productivity and efficiency in your workplace will be high if your staff can see what they're doing. Therefore, it makes sense to upgrade inadequate lighting with bright LED technology to illuminate all workspaces.
Another advantage of upgrading to LED lighting is that your energy bills will become significantly reduced, saving your business money in the long term.
Review Your Fire Safety Solutions
Last but not least, how good are your fire safety solutions? If your office is likely to burn to the ground if a fire breaks out, you need to be proactive and upgrade your fire safety technology.
One example is installing fire extinguishers that can tackle a multitude of sources, such as fuel and electricity. Another is having a fire sprinkler system installed to help extinguish blazes quickly.