No one wants to be hurt at work: every employee expects to come home at the end of their shift healthy and ready to do a great job tomorrow. Some accidents are unavoidable, but many workplace injuries can be prevented through strict adherence to industry standards on safety. As business owners, we sometimes wish to focus only on daily production and developing quality products, but it’s impossible to get that work done if employees feel unsafe or are seriously injured on the job. That’s why it’s essential that you take a look at your own business and consider how you can make immediate improvements to the safety and security of your facilities, whether you’re a mom-and-pop corner store or a multi-million dollar pharmaceutical company.
What are the liabilities of an unsafe working environment?
The first step is to recognize that this is a serious issue which needs to be a top priority. Knowledge is power, and having full awareness of the consequences of workplace injuries will help build a sense of urgency around this essential topic.
Firstly, a business that is found to be noncompliant with industry standards can face large fees if agencies like the Occupational Safety and Health Administration becomes aware of the issue. Depending on your business’s field, it may even be shut down for unsafe working conditions, which is clearly a serious consequence.
Secondly, your employees might take legal action against you if they are injured on the premises. An employee might hire a personal injury lawyer, which could cost you thousands in legal fees. Successful personal injury lawyers can win large settlements against a company found to be negligent – money that you or your insurance will have to pay.
Lastly – and perhaps most seriously – you can suffer a major loss of reputation if customers learn that your business isn’t safe for its workers. Patronage will fall, and you may have to lay off employees or even close business entirely.
Clearly these are major consequences which must be avoided at all costs. How can you prevent loss of customers, employees, and legal fees? Here’s how.
Conduct a 5S Audit
The concept of 5S Lean comes from Japan, and it includes five different factors to consider when ensuring your workplace is safe. In English, these include the following.
- Sort: make sure that you have only the tools necessary for the job, and put away any unnecessary materials or tools.
- Set in Order: organize the needed materials in a way that makes sense.
- Shine: clean up your workplace by sweeping away debris and washing surfaces. Make sure to get to those areas that might be overlooked, like corners and behind equipment.
- Standardize: develop a routine cleaning schedule and ensure employees follow it. You might clean everyday working spaces daily, then conduct a weekly check for low-traffic areas that might not need cleaning every day. Be sure that your cleaning list is specific, and that you keep cleaning materials in an easy-to-find place.
- Sustain: make 5S a way of life in your workplace. Stick to the routines that you’ve developed and make sure that employees do so as well.
The first time that you conduct a 5S audit, write down the problems that you see with the current situation, and then brainstorm ways to fix them. You might need to order new organizational equipment, like tool racks, or you might realize that you have tools that are rarely used and might be best placed in storage. If you conduct a 5S audit and are not sure how to rectify the issues, you might reach out to your fellow business owners and ask them how they’ve streamlined their cleaning and organization process. You can also seek help in industry groups or informational outlets specific to your industry.
Train employees to emphasize safety
The 5S audit is a great start, but to make it stick, you need buy-in from your employees: they need to understand why this is important and how they can maintain the standards that you’ve set. To do so, you must develop training materials and routines that will educate new employees and refresh the skills of those who have already been with you for some time.
While it might be tempting to simply hand employees reading material and then quiz them on what they’ve learned, this isn’t always the best way to ensure compliance with rules. There are many factors to great training, including creating interactive lessons and allowing employees to practice the skills they’ve learned; all these will help lessons ‘stick’ in the minds of your employees. You can also combine different modalities to suit the various learning styles of your workers.
Remember to keep these learning materials on hand so that employees can always refer back to them when necessary. You can keep a physical copy in the workplace, and also provide your employees with digital copies through any accounts they may have with your company. The more accessible you make your standards of conduct, the more likely that employees will engage with these lessons regularly and stick with them.
Final thoughts
Every day, there are numerous ways that an accident can happen; some are unavoidable, but many can be prevented through proper training and a clean, organized workplace environment. Given that the consequences are so high should an employee be injured on the job, it’s essential that you think carefully about how to improve your working environment and implement the necessary interventions right away.