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Manufacturing: 5 Ways To Boost Safety At Your Factory

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StrategyDriven Risk Management Article | Manufacturing: 5 Ways To Boost Safety At Your Factory

There is no denying that factory safety is crucial – whether you are running a textile business or a company that produces machinery in a factory.

The safety measures you put in place will depend on various factors, such as the nature of your business, the things you do, and the size of your premises.

That said, there are some ways to boost the safety of your industrial operation – irrespective of your business type. Whatever you manufacture, it’s worth knowing what you can do to improve your workplace safety.

Take a look at the following examples to give you some ideas and inspiration, as it’s likely you may not have implemented at least one of them at your premises:

1. Have A Robust Training Program

Did you know that one of the most common reasons for workplace accidents at manufacturing premises is due to inadequate training?

You are a responsible employer, and the safety of your workforce should be at the forefront of your mind. Therefore, you must ensure there is a robust training program in place for all employees to cover all aspects of safety and equipment operation related to their roles.

Moreover, you should block employees (such as new starters) from doing anything potentially dangerous until they’ve received the correct training for their jobs.

2. Periodically Upgrade Manufacturing Equipment

All equipment used in manufacturing processes will undeniably have a limited lifespan – irrespective of maintenance schedules.

There will come a time when the tools and equipment you use become obsolete or not fit for purpose, and it’s at those times you must upgrade them to new ones.

The frequency of planned upgrades will depend on the tools and equipment used, and the recommended upgrade paths from equipment manufacturers or industry experts.


3. Enforce PPE

PPE or Personal Protective Equipment is a must when working in a manufacturing environment – even if an employee’s role is merely to package newly produced goods.

Ensure that all employees have access to the PPE required for their roles and investigate processes where staff may need revised PPE for their work.

4. Have Thorough Regular Safety Checks

Regular safety checks of all manufacturing processes at your business must get conducted. Doing so will diminish the risk of accidents and injuries in the workplace and, of course, ensure optimal productivity.

If you feel such checks aren’t thorough enough, consider investing in some process safety training courses for key members of your workforce and create a robust safety check plan that everyone can follow with ease.

5. Ensure All Emergency Exits Are Clear

One final point to consider for your manufacturing business is to ensure that all emergency exits are clear at all times.

It might seem like an obvious statement to make, but some companies become complacent in this respect, and the results can be potentially devastating.

Ensure that all employees are aware of the importance of keeping emergency exits clear, and conduct checks of those exits several times each day for added peace of mind.

Vital Strategies To Improve Workplace Safety

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Are you prioritising workplace safety? There are so many reasons why you should be. After all, it is not only the ethical responsibility of those in charge but shows in an obvious way that you care about your employees, something that in turn can help to keep them motivated and loyal.

Additionally, by avoiding accidents and threats to safety before they have even begun, you can minimise additional risk to your business, including financial and public relations ones. To that end, take some time to learn how to improve your company’s workplace safety today. You’llYou’ll be glad you did.

Employee training

There is nothing better than comprehensive training for your workers if you want to improve safety in your business. Studies also show that well-trained employees ot only recognise and report potential risks much more frequently, but feel safer and more confident in the work they do as well.

With that in mind, thorough and up to date safety courses need to be completed by every worker. Be sure that they cover each aspect of their role, and provide additional outsourcing training for any heavy machinery or exceptionally high-risk situation such as working with chemical hazards.

Reward the behaviour you want to see

One of the most straightforward ways to encourage safer workplace behaviour is to reward it when you see it. Now, this does have to be done with care because giving out stickers and badges to adults isn’t going to work!

Instead, making the praise and rewards, you offer relevant for the people that it applies to is vital. For example, you could run a system of spot checks and give out raffle tickets to those displaying safe behaviour. Then over time, the team with the best safety record would collect the maximum amount of chances to win a prize. The prize itself needs to be worth the effort too, so a more significant bonus like a weekend away, or even extra time off paid often does the trick.

Signage is crucial

If you want your workplace to be as safe as possible, you mustn’t scrimp on the signage. It is always better to have more safety signage that you need. However, clarity is essential so you must make sure that information for people reading the sign you place in your workplace do not become overwhelming and therefore muddy the message.

Use occupational experts

What you may not realise is that there are a whole load of experts out there that can help you improve safety through your business. In particular, those specialising in occupational medicine will be able to tour your premises and find the areas that are most at risk of causing injury to your employees.

Physical therapists and health and safety experts can also help you work on and improve the ergonomics in your business. That is, setting things up in a way that doesn’t encourage injury or repetitive strain on any part of the human body. Something that can help you avoid longer-term injuries too.

Listen to your employees

Often it is workers on the front lines that notice issues with safety before anyone else. Unfortunately, unless action is taken at the management level, such problems can be left without improvement.

To that end, you must listen to your employees when it comes to safety and never dismiss their concerns. Where possible, instituting a formal process for reporting issues concerning safety is the best approach here. The reason is that it helps you to see where the main problems lie and also track what you are doing to rectify them.

Cleaning and organisation

A clean and organised workplace is one that is most likely to have fewer accidents and injuries. In fact, because of the current situation, proper cleaning and sanitisation are just about as vital as they have ever been.

The thing is that it is super tough to keep a business organised and clean without the correct infrastructure. That is you need space in which to store items quickly when you aren’t using them, as well as the right cleaning materials and training on how to use them. Even having a schedule of what needs to be cleaned in each area every day will help make sure that the correct standards are upheld.

Provide the right equipment

Have you tried to open a can with a knife rather than a can opener? If so you will know that not choosing equipment specially made for the task in hand can make that task instantly more risky and likely to end in injury or accident. Well, the same applies to your business, and that is why it is so essential to provide your employees with the right and well-maintained equipment at work.

Of course, this applies to the equipment and infrastructure that you install within your premises too. Fortunately, when it comes to safety, there are plenty of things you can use like this mini ball valve which provides a manual shutoff for a liquid or gas system, even in a small space. The latter being something which will give that extra level of safety for your employees.

Breaks are vital

When you are under pressure, it is easy to encourage your employees to work as fast, for as long as they can without a break. However, studies have shown that breaks are an essential part of maintaining safety because they help to keep workers more focused and give their body a rest from repetitive actions as well.

With that in mind, it is your duty as an employer to set regular break times and ensure that workers abide by and use these.

Include safety issues in your meetings

Another way that you can boost workplace safety is to make sure that it is an integrated part of the way you run your business. That means you talk about it in meetings, and remind people of any particular issue is daily briefings.

When your employees get used to talking and thinking about ways that safety can be improved as a regular part of their day, you will find that incidents and accidents decrease.

5 Business Benefits of Good Health and Safety at Work

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StrategyDriven Human Performance Article |Health and Safety|5 Business Benefits of Good Health and Safety at WorkInstilling good health and safety practices in your workplace is essential. In fact, it should always be at the top of a business’s priorities, even if the industry your business is part of isn’t considered to undertake high-risk activities.

Failing to put in place appropriate health and safety measures can have serious repercussions that may negatively impact the overall success of your company. To emphasize more, this article will take you through the 5 business benefits of good health and safety at work that you should know about.

1. Save more on legal and insurance costs

It’s generally a bad idea for your business to be in and out of courtrooms due to scenarios that might have been avoided in the first place. Having said that, accidents at work can turn out to be very expensive in terms of legal fees, compensation payouts, fines, and remedial action required. If you properly train your employees on the importance of maintaining safety at the workplace, the possibility of having any costly accidents are greatly reduced.

2. Increase productivity

Good health and safety can also increase the overall productivity of any business. With proper measures in place, your employees will be able to carry out their jobs more efficiently, while remaining safe. This is because their morale will be highly uplifted knowing that they have very little to worry about concerning their health and safety at the workplace. I’m sure you’d like your employees to leave the workplace in the same healthy condition they arrived in, right?

“Back in the day, if there was an accident or health and safety issue in your workplace, you may have opened a filing cabinet to follow the paper trail. Those days are gone”, says David Rowland, head of marketing at Effective Software. “This is because the software has now become the dominant way to administer health and safety systems, and this can save your business time, unnecessary losses and, in the end, money”.

3. Enhance reputation

If your employees feel that you care about their health and safety, they will probably tell people about it. In the end, you’ll have more competition for employment spaces, and most importantly – more people will get to know about your brand (products or services).

For instance, let’s say you work as a call center agent in Company A, and as a result of work, you develop a throat and voice problem. Since you’ve made it a habit to call your mum after work, this time you simply text her and tell her that you can’t speak on the phone due to a voice problem you got from work. In the end, your mum might get a feeling that the company you’re working for is very irresponsible, and even go on to tell a friend about it. Word spreads around, and before you realize it, people don’t want to work for that company or buy its products.

4. Reduce absenteeism

Injuries or illness as a result of poor working conditions is arguably the main cause of increased employee absenteeism. For instance, if an integral staff member develops a more severe problem that requires an extended sick leave or time off, then you’ll definitely have to hire a new employee. Alternatively, you can choose to train someone within the company to take over the post. In as much as this is a step in the right direction, recruiting and training someone new will certainly cost you money. Don’t forget the amount of sick pay that you’ll have to pay the sick staff member.

5. Retain loyal employees

If your staff members feel valued by your company, this will most definitely make them happier at work. As a result, none of your employees would like to quit and work for a rival company. After all, who wouldn’t want to work for a highly reputable and caring company? Certainly not me!

It’s important that both you and your staff members are properly protected from injuries or illness at the workplace. By taking the necessary steps to safeguard their health and wellbeing, your employees will be far more inclined to focus on ensuring that your business succeeds. That’s why it’s important to remember the aforementioned business benefits of good health and safety at work.

5 Ways To Minimise Business Mistakes

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Everyone makes mistakes, but if you and your team are constantly making blunders, you may want to consider putting some measures in place to reduce the chance of error. Here are just a few ways that you can minimise mistakes.

Improve your training

If employees haven’t been trained properly, you can expect more mistakes to happen. Make sure that you’re not throwing new employees into the deep end by skimping on training. If you’re unable to train them, delegate the task to a senior employee. You can also adopt e-learning resources that allow employees to train themselves (this shouldn’t be your sole form of training, but could be a useful supplement). On top of this, you can create a handbook that employees can refer to, saving them from having to ask you questions if they’ve forgotten how to do something (although you should be prepared to show people things more than once).

Encourage team communication

If your team aren’t communicating, people may get their wires crosses and complete each other’s tasks or attempt to do things on their own that they shouldn’t be doing. You can encourage team communication by adopting an open plan office and holding regular meetings. You can also use software to record progress, so that everyone knows where they’re up to.

Make tasks simpler with technology

There may be ways to simplify tasks with technology. Programmes such as this oil and gas production software are able to automate tasks and reduce human error. There may also be tools that can add precision to a job such as food thermometers in a kitchen when cooking meat or a laser cutting machine for cutting materials more precisely.

Introduce checks

It’s worth adding checks in place that can help to reduce errors. These may be checks that can be done individually such as a waiter reading back a table order to the customers before processing it. You might also be able to use signs such as a health and safety checklist on a machine, which employees can go through before use. Alternatively, you or another employee could be put in charge of screening tasks before they’re completed such as having someone else read and edit an article or having someone employed to check product quality in a factory.

Limit distractions

Distractions could also be leading people to make mistakes. Whilst an open plan office is great for communication, it might not be so great for jobs that require intense concentration. Having a separate space for these tasks could be beneficial – employees could take it turn to use this space. You should also refrain from asking employees to run too many errands – unless they are of utmost importance, keep a note of them and set them as a task at the beginning of the next day so that employees can schedule them in. Be wary that you may even be able to outsource some distractions such as outsourcing a company to take phonecalls for you and filter the important ones through.