There are many definitions out there as to what health and safety actually involve when doing your job every single day. The simple explanation is that it is all about making sure that you manage the risk so that people who work for you and customers alike are safe. Every business should have some health and safety management plan in place and in order for it to work, it needs the efforts of management, all employees, and even customers.
If you are a contractor and you have workers out on building sites or on the roads completing certain jobs then you need to be able to guarantee their safety at all times. Even for simple and straightforward jobs on Australia’s roads for example, there should always be an employee encouraged to go on some kind of a traffic controller course in order to be able to keep the other employees safe as they go about their work. This is just one example of following health and safety rules and the following are just some of the many benefits that health and safety in any work environment provides.
- It protects your workers – As the owner of a business or manager, you should never see health and safety rules as something that is restricting you from making money and generating profits. You need to think of health and safety as something that is to the benefit of everyone because if your staff are not getting injured then they are taking less time off work and that means that you have a more efficient and productive business enterprise.
- It reduces your downtime – No business can afford to have any downtime at all in this very competitive environment and even if your business is only down for a few hours due to a health and safety accident, that is time that is lost and that is money that is not being made. With the right health and safety plan in place, your business can avoid all downtime because accidents will be avoided in the first place.
- It leads to more customers – Modern customers are very switched on when it comes to health and safety and if they feel that you are running a business that isn’t putting proper protections in place to protect your workers, then they will vote with their feet and shop elsewhere. People want to buy products and services from a business that they know is ethical and let them know does the morally right thing every single time when it comes to their workforce.
In order for any health and safety plan to work, you need to lead from the very top and if workers see management and owners taking health and safety very seriously indeed then they will do likewise. It is important that you send your staff on regular training courses to remind them about the importance of health and safety in the workplace. It is always a good idea to involve all of your workers when you do a risk assessment because they have their fingers on the pulse and they know exactly what is happening on any working day.
