New regulations from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) have small business owners concerned. Specifically, new rules concerning protective equipment and practices designed to prevent slips and falls will go into effect on January 17, 2017. As managers scramble to ensure compliance to these new rules, it is a good time to brush up on some workplace safety tips that you might have not considered.
Creating a safe work environment is essential to achieving success as a company. While some regulations and restrictions may seem trivial, they help guarantee that employees will not be harmed while on the job and that they come to work ready to succeed. While some businesses have seen interesting reasons for dramatic drops in employee absenteeism, the best way to ensure your workforce shows up is if they have a safe and clean place to do so. Obviously, this also prevents the business itself from being held liable. There are many issues that small business owners can overlook when it comes to maintaining safety. Here are a few considerations to keep in mind the next time you inspect your work environment:
Ensure the air in your work environment is clean:
While a leaky pipe or a poorly insulated window might seem like just a minor inconvenience, it can also pose a health hazard to employees. Areas that are constantly exposed to moisture will grow mold, which can trigger allergies. In the worst-case scenario, toxic molds could potentially grow in your workplace. While this may seem unlikely, toxic molds can cause deadly illnesses, and likely contribute to the deaths of thousands of Americans per year.
Business owners should take the same care when maintaining the workplace as they would their own home. The same maintenance problems that can lead to health hazards at home can lead to similar issues for employees. You can prevent issues with indoor air quality with some basic exterior maintenance. Regularly resealing windows, painting around the trims of doors, and maintaining gutters can improve indoor air quality.
Clear the workplace of dangerous materials:
If your office is situated in a building constructed more than twenty years ago, there is a good chance that toxic building materials were used in its construction. The most common building materials that can cause harm to workers are lead, mercury, PVC, and asbestos. The latter is an especially dangerous material to have in the workplace, as it can cause mesothelioma — a disease that claims the lives of thousands of people every year.
Unless problematic materials have been detected and removed in the intervening years, your employees are in danger of being harmed by them. It is wise to hire professionals to remove dangerous materials from a worksite, since amateurs risk contaminating the environment with improper handling.
Use a reliability-centered maintenance routine:
One concern that is occasionally overlooked in business environments is establishing a safe minimum level of maintenance. Reliability-centered maintenance (RCM) is simply the process of determining the most effective approach to ensuring that equipment does not fail through regular inspection and upkeep. Depending on your industry, equipment failure could result in a severe loss of productivity, or even pose a hazard to employees (for example, if your “equipment” consists of company vehicles).
The best way to keep track of crucial inspection tasks and maintenance is through a preventive maintenance system. These systems help business owners maintain a schedule for key tasks, depending on how often the equipment is used and when it was last inspected. Not only can this protect employees, it can also ensure that the business is compliant with legal industry regulations.
A safe workplace is good business. Far too frequently, issues like these are not be apparent to business owners until it is too late. By regularly inspecting and ensuring compliance with OSHA regulations, entrepreneurs can prevent harming employees or being targeted by legal action. Every company has an obligation to create a safe work environment.
