Health and Safety Benefits in the Workplace
If your company is on top of its health and safety procedures, it can have a number of benefits. As well as the most direct effect of your staff feeling safe from hazards, it also gives you a fantastic piece of mind – if your health and safety is up to scratch, then you shouldn’t have to worry too much about your workforce. Most companies leave the arduous task of enforcing the health and safety regulations to either the manager or the supervisor. It is imperative that they are fully trained in health and safety procedure and its common practices in order to effectively carry out their job role with maximum efficiency, as it is their responsibility to ensure the safety of the workforce.
On top of making sure that your workforce is safe, an excellent health and safety record can also do the following for your company:
Productivity increases
Regular audits and checks of equipment my managerial staff or supervisors will highlight any instances where thing may be improved. The most commonplace and susceptible to any issues is a rather unlikely source – office workers. Lack of ergonomic furniture and poorly set up office spaces, as well as poorly managed break regimes can lead to office workers suffering from eye strain, headaches, RSI, and back aches, resulting in many “micro-breaks” in order to wind down. This then hampers productivity as you’re not getting the best out of them.
With any issues noted and monitored, you can take preventive measures to make sure this isn’t the case. A happy and comfortable worker is a happy one – this applies across all job roles.
Galvanising your reputation
Inadequate health and safety precautions could cause you issues with your workforces wellbeing and comfort, causing them to take days off, be it lack of structured breaks, inadequate workwear provisions, or anything which can cause them to either get ill, injure themselves – or just feel they need a day off for downtime, all of these can give your company a bad reputation. If that worker was to discuss this with a friend, and then from there on in your reputation is sullied due to negligence towards health and safety – this could not only cause people to think less of your company, but it could also impact sales and client base, as well as put off possible employees from applying to any jobs you advertise.
On the other hand – if you do look after your staff, and ensure everybody is looked after, and everything is managed correctly then you will see the opposite – People will spread good words about your company, thus improving your local presence, as well as attracting new customers and possible new employees.
Absentee percentages drop
Following on from the last point, if your health and safety practices are thorough and keep your workforce pro-active and free from injuries and illness – This will directly impact the number of people who are likely to take workdays off or succumb to illness and need time off to recover, which can only be a good thing.
Minimise legal actions and damages
You’ve all seen the adverts on TV, where somebody slips over at work and uses legal aid in order to receive compensation…unfortunately this is no myth – it can happen. And if there is any slack in your Health and safety guidelines, or you’re missing a formal policy – a legal requirement if you have more than five people in active employment, then you could well be an easy target for somebody to attempt to force compensation. On top of the legal and monetary ramifications of this happening, it can also be extremely damaging to your business if people were to find out about it, as well as whoever was in charge of setting out health and safety guidelines for the company being made solely responsible, incurring a fine or even worse – a jail term.
A little hard work in preventing these incidents before they happen is a drop in the ocean compared to what could happen if you were to just let things slide and deal with them when it is too late.
Insurance premiums drop
Being able to prove to insurers that you have staff onsite who are fully trained in health and safety issues will help to greatly decrease insurance premiums due to insurers seeing you as less likely to make a claim. In the long run your premiums will stay low as a result of this.
