As a business owner, you have the responsibility in your work environment to provide a healthy environment for the safety and welfare of your employees as well as visitors. To make your work place safer, below are some tips that will focus on key common areas of risk.
Put Your People First
You personnel are by far your company’s number one asset and keeping them safe and healthy is not only good for your business, it can minimize your workers compensation exposure. To do that:
- Offer them prevention and wellness activities such as dance instruction, boot camps, or even an outdoor event such as volley ball.
- Have immediate access in place so your injured employees can receive immediate treatment.
- Have a team that is always searching for and eliminating workplace hazards.
- Offer your employees early intervention and rehabilitation programs for drug and alcohol abuse.
- Provide them some free medical services such as free flu shots or some health screenings.
Provide a Safe Environment
Heavy equipment, electrical hazards, unsafe building environment, and even desk chairs can potentially pose health threats to your employees or even visitors. You may want to look at some of the following solutions to keep your environment safe.
- Make sure you conduct routine maintenance on equipment.
- Always make sure your employees are exercising proper ergonomic conditions.
- Monitor your equipment for unsafe wear and tear, and replace or repair as necessary.
- Help your employees by educating them on hazards and risks.
- Always make sure employees utilize all protective gear when operating any equipment.
- Create, test, and monitor a disaster plan.
- Control and eliminate any toxic chemical use where you can…green is in!
- Make your workplace smoke-free. This can save you on health care costs.
Lead by example
Workplace safety starts within the company’s leadership. In order to establish and communicate your company’s vision, mission, policies and trust you need to:
- Make sure you keep all confidential medical information protected.
- Have meetings and offer educational programs to improve health and safety in the workplace.
- Discover how to find and prevent accidents in the workplace.
- Make sure you have zero-tolerance policies for workplace violence, and retribution.
- Offering access to cost effective health care benefit programs is a great benefit.
If you have any employees, most states require you to have a workers compensation policy to insure coverage for those employees against a workplace injury. In most cases, the owners of a sole-proprietorship or a partner in a partnership are not considered employees and have the option whether to cover themselves or not, and can opt out or sign a form doing so.
