How to Improve Employee Health and Safety

Ensuring employee health and safety with a unified EHS solution.

 

Did you know that there are approximately 340 million work-related accidents that happen every year globally? Private industry employers reported about 2.7 million nonfatal workplace injuries and illnesses.

The fact is that no matter how great your company is, accidents do happen. However, there are many measures that can be taught and practiced helping prevent those accidents and risks from occurring a soften. Therefore, employee health and safety are always a matter of concern and should be taken seriously.

If you want to ensure the well-being of your workers, we’re going to provide the most effective ways to improve employee health and safety. Here is how to improve employee health and safety in the workplace.

Encourage a Healthy Lifestyle

You can start by promoting a healthy life style among your employees. A healthy lifestyle includes maintaining a healthy diet, getting regular exercise, and getting enough sleep.

When your employees are healthy, they are more likely to have more energy and be more productive. They’re also less likely to get sick, which means they will miss less work. There are a few ways you can promote a healthy lifestyle at work. You can start by offering healthy food options in the break room or cafeteria. You can also offer discounts on gym memberships or create an employee wellness program.

Conduct Safety Training

Another way to improve employee health and safety is to provide safety training on a regular basis. Safety training should cover topics such as:

  • Lifting techniques that work
  • Machine safety
  • Emergency procedures
  • Wearing proper safety equipment

The importance of safety training is that it provides employees with the necessary skills and awareness to prevent accidents and risks in the workplace from occurring. According to OSHA, it serves as an understanding of workplace hazards and how to identify, report, and control them so that they can contribute to its development and implementation.

Promote Open Communication

It’s important that employees feel comfortable communicating with management about health and safety concerns. Employees should know that their concerns will be taken seriously and that they won’t be penalized for speaking up.

You can encourage open communication by holding regular safety meetings where employees can voice their concerns. You can also set up an anonymous suggestion box or employee hotline for health and safety concerns.

Make sure that all your workers know how important their health and safety are to you. There can’t be any fear of discipline if staff come forward with unsafe work concerns because they don’t feel confident coming to their management.

Conduct Routine Safety Inspections

Regular safety inspections are a necessary part of maintaining a safe workplace. Employee safety committees, managers, or outside safety consultants can all provide inspections.

During a safety inspection, all areas of the workplace should be checked for potential hazards. Once hazards are identified, corrective measures should be taken to eliminate them. Not only should there be safety inspections, but there should be proper training on how to perform those safety inspections. If the inspections are not performed properly in the first place or if they are not taken seriously, it defeats the whole purpose and can lead to serious injuries.

Educate Employees on Safety Hazards

Employees should know the safety hazards associated with their job. They should also know how to identify these hazards and what to do if they’re exposed to them.

Employees should have this information when they’re first hired and then be provided with refresher courses on a regular basis. You can provide this education through employee safety manuals, online safety courses, or in-person safety training.

Invest in Safety Equipment

Investing in safety equipment is another way to improve employee health and safety in the workplace. We are not just talking about the commonly required safety equipment in a building, such as fire extinguishers, first-aid kits, and smoke detectors.

We are talking about safety equipment for the employees as well, such as:

  • Proper gloves
  • Eye protection
  • Elbow or knee pads
  • Harnesses
  • Back braces

Provide First-Aid Training

All employees should be trained in first aid. This training should cover topics such as:

  • Treating cuts and scrapes
  • Treating burns
  • Treating seizures
  • Providing CPR

All first-aid kits should be readily available in the workplace, and all employees should know where they’re located.

Record and Investigate All Accidents

It is important to record and investigate all accidents that occur in the workplace. This information can help to identify hazards and prevent future accidents from happening. It is also helpful in the Corrective Action and Preventive Action strategy (CAPA).

Employees should know how to report an accident and who to contact if they’re injured. Accident investigations should happen as soon as possible after the accident occurs. No accident should ever “disappear,” “ignored,” or be “swept under the rug”. Everyone should be treated seriously, no matter how small it may seem.

Employees Should Be Rewarded

Rewarding employees for following safety procedures is a great way to encourage employee compliance. You can offer rewards such as gift cards, paid time off, or extra vacation days.

You could also have a safety incentive program where employees can be in a drawing for a larger prize if they follow safety procedures.

Safety should be encouraged in every aspect of the workplace, and not just looked at as something that is “annoying” or “time-consuming”. If done correctly, it can help to improve employee morale and increase productivity.

Proper Labels and Signage

Finally, it’s important to have proper labels and signage in the workplace. This includes:

  • Posting warning signs near hazards
  • Using labels on chemicals and other hazardous materials
  • Wearing proper PPE
Employees should be able to identify potential hazards quickly and know what precautions to take. Proper labeling and signage can help to prevent accidents and injuries in the workplace.

The aim of your organization is to look after its employees. There is no company without a healthy staff. Having a strong health and safety policy in place at your business will keep everyone safe. Make it a top priority from the start, and your employees will appreciate knowing you’re doing everything you can to keep them safe.

Invest in an All-In-One EHS Solution

Another great way to improve employee safety is to invest in a total end-to-end solution program designed for employee health and safety (EHS).

This type of program allows you as an employer to automate, manage, and control workplace health and safety workflows via an easily configurable employee health and safety management system.

It allows you to manage workplace health and safety across multiple sites (locally, regionally, nationally, and globally) all through one digital cloud. This makes things more efficient and easier than ever before.

Some of the many benefits of this include:
  • Ensure the safety and security of the workforce.
  • Manage employees, organizations, locations, and job roles.
  • Tracking training, certifications, and licenses
  • Conduct inspections and investigations and report the findings.
  • Supervisory responsibility for employee health, immunization compliance, industrial hygiene, and environmental exposures.

How to Improve Employee Health and Safety Effectively

We discussed quite a lot of information on how to improve employee health and safety, which can seem overwhelming and time-consuming. However, there are tools that you can utilize to help you effectively and efficiently implement all these steps.

Our Emidence XD software is designed specially to help employers, managers, and payors improve health and safety in the best way possible. Start by optimizing your EHS processes, reducing employee incidents, lowering EHS costs, and improving compliance with Emidence XD. It helps you stay agile, scale, and adapt to your evolving EHS needs.

Take the steps towards unprecedented visibility, insight, and power to identify risks in real-time, proactively protect workers, and improve process efficiency with Emidence XD. Book a demo today.

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