Health and Safety in the Workplace | 5 Ways to Ensure Your Employees’ Wellbeing

Are you looking for ways to ensure the health and safety of your employees in an industrial or construction setting?

In this blog, we’re sharing 5 tips on how to prioritise staff workplace wellbeing in these sectors:

Health and Safety in the Workplace: Inductions

When someone new joins your team, it’s essential that they receive a full induction. For some industries, this should happen every time work starts on a new project. 

In construction, for example, no two sites are the same. Each one will have its own work operations and unique hazards, meaning that a proper induction is necessary whenever one of your employees moves to a new site. 

For the purpose of ensuring health and safety in the workplace, never allow your staff members to begin work without an induction. It shares the most important information with them: where to sign in, where to go, what to do, and what to avoid. 

Health and Safety in the Workplace: PPE

In industrial and construction workplaces, PPE is non-negotiable for your employees. 

Make sure that your workers are equipped with all of the PPE they might need, as not having the right kit could truly be the difference between life and death for them. 

For instance, high visibility clothing ensures that your employees can be seen at all times, whilst safety boots provide better grip and foot protection. A hard hat can be easily replaced – a skull, not so much. 

Health and Safety in the Workplace: Equipment

It’s important to provide your staff with the right equipment to approach the job they’ve been asked to do.

In an industrial or construction setting, this could look like giving your employees access to proper dust extraction systems, or supplying 110v equipment when there’s the possibility of wet conditions. 

A dust extraction system, for example, can be used to significantly improve air quality, collecting and removing dust and other harmful impurities from the working environment.

Using the correct tool for the job not only gets it done safely, it gets it done faster, too. 

Health and Safety in the Workplace: Signs and Procedures

With all of your employees, it’s paramount they understand the significance of safety signs and procedures. These should always be explained in detail as part of an induction.

There should also be risk assessments in place for all activities, to ensure health and safety in the workplace is taken seriously. Emphasise to your staff that these must be read and understood before the start of any job. 

Health and Safety in the Workplace: Reporting

Finally, encourage a culture of prompt reporting within the workplace, so that employees aren’t tempted to ignore problems when they notice them. 

Whether it’s completing a near-miss report, filling out an incident form, or simply telling their supervisor, make sure everyone understands whatever procedure is in place at your company. 

It’s only possible for the management team to take swift action if they’re aware a problem has occurred. Reiterate this to your teams and they should see the benefit in complying with this expectation. 

If you’d like to learn about how Dustcontrol can help your business with health and safety in the workplace, get in touch today.

Alternatively, why not read our previous post on 4 common signs of lung problems?