Employee safety should always be the number one concern for your business. Now, more than ever before, the pandemic is bringing safety to the forefront of our daily operations. Here are five great ways to make your manufacturing facility safer for your valued employees.
Have Safety Checklists Easily Accessible
Proper education is the biggest step you can take to protect your employees. Take the time to have official safety checklists posted in easily accessible areas. These should instruct employees on how to operate each piece of equipment in the facility safely. Your checklist should also note red flags employees should be watching out for and what they should do if they notice any.
Have Emergency Protection Stations
While your day-to-day operations may not require a whole lot of excessive safety attire, you need to make sure you have attire for when emergencies strike. For instance, if there happens to be an unexpected chemical spill, you need to have emergency hazmat suits available for employees to wear.
Routine Maintenance and Safety Inspections
One of the best ways to prevent injuries due to equipment malfunction is to simply schedule routine maintenance and safety inspections. Each piece of equipment should have a set maintenance schedule. You can opt to perform the safety inspection in accordance with the routine maintenance or you can have inspections performed more often. When scheduling maintenance for your equipment, be sure to consider your HVAC system as well. Maintenance like burner service will ensure that your factory continues to run as scheduled without problems.
Listen to Your Employees
The people who can tell you what your safety hazards are the best are going to be your employees who are working on the floor day in and day out. It’s always a good idea to take suggestions from employees. As an executive, you need to ensure that you provide an open environment for employees to express their safety concerns without fear of negative repercussions.
Institute and Practice Emergency Exit Plans
When you were in grade school you likely ran some emergency exit drills. These were to inform you of how to exit the building in the event there was an emergency situation. However, it’s likely that you haven’t gone through one of these drills since you started working. You should follow the advice of your grade school professionals and institute the practice of emergency exit plans.
This way, every employee knows what to do when disaster strikes.
Making your manufacturing facility safer starts with identifying what safety hazards are in your way. Each facility is going to be a bit different from the next. Start by implementing the strategies above and continue to look out for safety weaknesses that you can fix in the future.
