June is National Safety Month!
Ideally, every day is safety day for both businesses and employees, but it’s easy to grow complacent and take safety for granted. Take this month to pay particular attention to what your company is doing well and how you can improve.
Here’s how you can help your team stay safer.
Prevention
Start by walking around and just looking. Even when you put safety measures into place and provide safety training, it’s natural for people to become complacent. Employees prop doors open, ignore safety processes or fail to use safety equipment. The cause is often that the safety solution is simply inconvenient. It’s natural to take the path of least resistance. If you’re adding complexity to someone’s job while still expecting them to perform at the same speed, they’re going to take shortcuts. So, look for safety gaps, not with a mind toward punishing an offender, but rather to troubleshoot and find a less intrusive solution.
COVID-19 Safety
In many areas’ incidents of COVID-19 are lessening, in part because of the safety measures p such as ventilation, sanitation, social distancing, and barriers. Now that employees who were working remotely or at home caring for family are returning to the office, it’s easy to think the pandemic is behind us. But even though more people are getting vaccinated every day, the jury is out as to whether or not we need to worry about new virus strains developing. It’s important to remind employees not to let their guard down entirely.
Help Employees Feel Safe on the Job
Safety programs tend to focus on issues like getting hurt on a piece of equipment. It’s not the only concern that people have on the job. They are worried about walking to their car safely, particularly in the dark. Add more lighting or guards to improve safety and feelings of security. They are worried about retaliation if they reject an unwanted advance. Be sure sexual harassment training is meaningful and that offenders, not victims, are punished. Workplace violence is a growing problem. Let your team know how you are keeping them safe on the job.
A reputation for taking employee safety seriously will make your company a place where people want to work.
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