The new year might be well under way, but that doesn’t magically make the pandemic disappear. Like it or not, the COVID-19 crisis is going to prevail in 2021 in many countries around the world, so it’s important more than ever before to invest in the health and safety of your employees. After all, you can’t expect to run a successful company or scale business growth if your employees are constantly absent due to illness or injury. Add to that, injury and sick leave can open your business up to legal liability if you don’t have the necessary health and safety measures and policies in place.
If you want to create and maintain the perfect team that is healthy and passionate all year round, then you need to focus on the physical and mental health of your employee collective. With all of that in mind, let’s go over the best tips you can implement right away in order to elevate workplace health and safety and drive your company forward.
Build a culture around health and safety
Firstly, it’s important to incentivize employees to adopt any new health and safety policies and measures you introduce by building a positive company culture centered on personal health. This will ensure that people actually read the new policies, internalize information, and embrace any changes you roll out in the future. Why? Because they are not doing it for you, they’re doing it for themselves.
This is the key to the whole thing, inspiring your employees to truly care about their health and safety at work rather than forcing them to embrace changes they don’t believe in. To achieve all of this, you should build your company culture on the pillars of trust and transparency, honesty and accountability, as well as equality and co-dependence. This will inspire trust between employees and the management, leading to many positive outcomes.
Incentivize healthy living in and outside work
For all the policies and measures you introduce, you can’t expect people to stay healthy if they don’t nurture their physical and mental well-being in their day-to-day lives. In other words, by inspiring your employees to truly take care of themselves, you will have won half the battle. This is why it is so important to implement employee wellness programs that focus on education and the introduction of healthy practices in the workplace.
Educate employees on the importance of regular physical exercise and healthy eating. Give them ideas based on their interests to improve their physical health and eating habits, especially in the workplace. Next, introduce healthier food options to the cafeteria, and provide them with company discounts to nearby fitness facilities if you don’t have an on-site gym.
Conduct regular COVID testing
The COVID-19 pandemic is not going anywhere anytime soon, so you have to stay on your toes. Conducting regular testing and conducting a risk assessment is paramount to ensuring workplace health and safety, but you also need to provide your employees with hygiene products like masks and hand sanitizers placed strategically around the workplace.
However, the most important thing is to have medical professionals run COVID-19 test at regular intervals, and that emergency experts with the proper ACLS certification are always available to respond to medical emergencies. Because COVID-19 has a high tendency to cause severe cardio-pulmonary symptoms, having certified life support specialists on standby is the only way to provide immediate care and thus save lives if need be. Visit MyBiosource for more information about Covid 19 testing.
Keep the space clean at all times
It should go without saying, but keeping the space sanitized is not only mandatory, but crucial for employee health. Now more than ever before, it is important to clean those high-traffic areas at work properly, and have several cleaning shifts during the day.
Ideally, your cleaning staff will sanitize the space before the employees arrive in the morning, during the day when people are on their lunch breaks, and in the evening after hours. Doing this will not only help retain a healthy workforce, but it will also positively affect your company’s image in the eyes of your employees and customers.
Implement a safety policy and provide training
Last but not least, you need to minimize liability and ensure everyone is onboard with the new measures by instating a detailed health and safety policy. This is a comprehensive document detailing all of the tactics you’re using to keep your employees safe, the potential risks and hazards people need to be aware of, as well as the quality of life measures people should uphold in your organization.
You’ll need to send this policy to every employee, but also ensure that they have adopted it through personalized training, education, and guidance. Be sure to check up on your employees regularly to see that they’re adhering to the policy. This will minimize liability for your company and help create a safer workplace for all.
Wrapping up
Many factors influence the success of a business, and in the new normal, health and safety are among the most important ones. With these tips in mind, you should have no problem elevating the health of your employee collective while making sure that your business is a safe place to be.
About the Author:
Keith Coppersmith is a business and marketing expert who has experienced both the rise and fall of many businesses. As a regular contributor at BizzmarkBlog, he enjoys writing and providing insight of the industry based on both practice and theory.
