Get serious about safety to save your business time and money. Here are twelve workplace safety tips that will help you keep your people safe and your business running.
When JetBlue was just building its roots as a small start-up, the company already knew the safety of its employees would be at the core of its future success. “JetBlue is built on a foundation of kindness and compassion. We want to do well by our customers, our crewmembers, and the communities we serve,” explains Penny Neferis, Director of Business Continuity and Emergency Response and one of the first three team members on staff.
Now that the company has grown to more than 1,000 daily flights and over 24,000 employees, ensuring workplace safety has gotten a little more complicated—but no less important. “We have planes in the air at all times across over 30 different countries,” she says. “Critical events happen every day in the aviation industry. Whether there’s an aircraft with a mechanical issue that requires maintenance, a winter storm that grounds our planes, or a medical situation that requires an emergency landing, we always need to be prepared.”
JetBlue uses threat intelligence to stay aware of any and all emerging disruptions across the globe, ensuring the safety of their crew, passengers, and property. Just as it is for JetBlue, it’s vital that you give workplace safety careful consideration at every turn. Fortunately, creating a safe workplace doesn’t have to be complicated. Here are twelve work safety tips you can kick off now to keep your people safe and your business running normally, even in the face of workplace hazards.
12 Safety Tips for Work
1. Communicate the Importance of Safety Culture
Workplace safety is a job that’s never done, and it’s not just the responsibility of your environment, health, and safety (EHS) team alone. Rather, your organization should strive to build a culture of workplace safety for which everyone is accountable.
Safety culture is a foundational set of beliefs and behaviors that a company upholds about workplace safety. When a company prioritizes safety above all else, you might say they have a strong and positive safety culture. A workplace safety culture requires buy-in from everyone at your company, from the newest hire up to the CEO and board members. When safety is ingrained in your company culture, all your employees are going to see it as a standard, not a formality.
2. Encourage Situational Awareness
3. Host Regular Safety Training
Workplace hazards won’t strike at a convenient time, so you need to be ready before they occur. Workplace safety is a skill set that must be honed over time, and a foundational part of this development is standardized training for employees.
“What I find is that most businesses don’t even want to think about preparing for something bad to happen until it happens. Start with the buy-in from the top—those decision-makers that run the company need to find the value and importance of training and making their people aware of just what to do in an emergency.”
— Chris Marciano, CEO & Founder of Prepare to Act
Safety is on the rise
As important as workplace safety is to keep front and center in your operations, it’s also good to look at how far we have come. Since President Richard Nixon signed the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 and created the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), the rate of workplace injuries and illnesses has decreased dramatically.
4. Run Emergency Drills
Once you have training established and your employees know what to do during an accident or dangerous incident, you can run drills to commit those training procedures to muscle memory. Drills also give your employees an idea of what their response would feel like in action—clearer than the sense they’ll get from sitting through training or watching a video.
This step-by-step video will guide you through the process of conducting a fire drill at work.
5. Provide Proper Safety Equipment and PPE
Make sure everyone has equipment that is in good working order and fits them. If they are missing any particular piece of gear, provide them with an easy and fast way to request and receive replacement safety equipment.
6. Keep Facility and Equipment in Good Condition
When a large group of people collaborates in the same space, uses the same equipment, and walks the same floors, working conditions can deteriorate quickly. Everything from heavy machinery and forklifts to the break room coffee maker must be maintained and kept in a safe and sanitary condition, according to OSHA requirements. These regular safety measures help you prevent slips and falls due to wet or dirty floors, avoid accidents from poorly maintained tools and machines, and keep your people safe and healthy overall.
You also want to keep emergency equipment stocked and up to date. Check fire extinguishers, first aid kits, and smoke detectors to ensure they are working properly before they’re needed in the rush of an emergency.
7. Make Safety a Daily Priority
8. Communicate About Hazards
Despite your best efforts to support a safe working environment, accidents might still occur. That’s why it’s paramount to have a way to communicate with everyone should such an event come to pass. Posted signage like wet floor signs and reminders on the bulletin board can be helpful in this case but is far from sufficient.
9. Celebrate Safety Over Speed
You can tell the most about a company’s culture by asking one question: What do they celebrate? That is, what does success look like in the company’s eyes? Is it maximizing profits at all costs? Maybe producing a quality product or maintaining your beloved brand? These goals are valuable in their own right, but if you want to improve workplace safety, your team should be encouraged and empowered to celebrate safety as a priority.
For example, if a worker comes to their supervisor with a safety concern, they should under no circumstances be made to feel as if they did the wrong thing. If their supervisor responds with an eye roll and an exasperated call to shut down the factory floor, then employees will be less likely to report incidents and concerns in the future. When leaders demonstrate a preference for shortcuts, employee reticence could mean that preventable accidents do play out, harming employees and halting operations. Instead, make sure safety efforts are celebrated and valued—even incentivized—despite the slowdowns they may cause.
10. Keep Safety Records
Any company with more than a handful of employees knows that recordkeeping is important for sales and staffing purposes, but some forget that the same should apply to safety recordkeeping. The most important things to track are all safety incidents and accidents so you can reflect and learn from them. An after-action report can help your safety team identify what caused the issue and how it can be prevented and mitigated in the future.
There is also value in maintaining a record of all proactive safety initiatives. When you conduct a training session, keep a record of attendance, topics covered, and even questions and feedback. On the most basic level, you need to keep track of who has been trained in what. On a more complex level, these training sessions are two-way streets where participants’ insights and feedback can inform the best, most up-to-date version of your emergency response plans.
11. Prioritize Good Ergonomics
One of the most common workplace-related injuries is musculoskeletal disorders. These health problems can manifest as damage to muscles, nerves, bones, blood vessels, ligaments, and tendons. They are most often found in jobs that require lifting heavy objects or similar repetitive tasks for long periods of time. The answer to these issues is good ergonomics.
12. Prioritize Mental, Psychological, and Physical Health
Employers around the world have found that mental health has become a more prominent challenge ever since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. As employees experienced greater stress due to world events, workers became acutely aware of feelings of burnout and dissatisfaction. This, in turn, led to a wave of people leaving their jobs that has been dubbed the “Great Resignation.”
Facilitate good mental health and well-being for your employees by finding ways to limit workplace stress and providing ample opportunities for regular breaks throughout the day. Employees who are physically and mentally well are going to be better equipped to handle potential hazards in the workplace, avert disasters, and support ongoing operations.