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There are some jobs out there that have hazards built into them which makes them less safe than other jobs. For example, working on a construction site is considerably less safe than working in an office, although both do have their risks. You cannot make your business 100% danger free, but you can do everything possible to make sure people are as safe as they possibly can be while you are in charge. It’s not the easiest thing to do, but you do need to ensure that the people who work for you can come to work and feel confident that you are looking after their health and well being.
When people start working for your business and you hand them an employee ID number, that could be your signature to show them that they matter, they are accounted for, and you are accountable to them. There are so many things that you can put in place to minimize hazards in the office, because even though construction may be considerably more dangerous, a sit down office job can still pose a lot of risks to everybody. So, with that in mind we thought it would be important to tell you all of the things that you could be doing to make your office safer for the people who spend their time working in your business.
- Encourage taking breaks. Sitting at a desk all day long is never good for the spine or for the legs, so you need to do what you can to encourage your workers to take as many breaks as is necessary to feel comfortable. If your place of work is full of people sitting at desks for hours at a time, then make sure you have some kind of system or bell going to let people know that they should be getting up and moving around. You could even look into the type of discs that you have, so that you are able to introduce standing desks to your employees. When you give people the choice like this, they will respect you more as an employer because you are looking after their health and well being even though you don’t necessarily have to go above and beyond. A good employer wants to go above and beyond though, and if you want to be a good employer then you should take this tip.
- Work on increasing the ventilation in your office. People spend a lot of time in the office breathing the same recycled air, so you need to ensure that it’s well ventilated so that recycled air doesn’t become full of bacteria and everybody gets sick. It’s not just about people getting ill, though. It’s about the fact that when people come to work they should be able to breathe clean and fresh air and if you have the carpets being cleaned or the office in general being painted or cleaned it should be a well ventilated space for comfort and health of everybody involved. Increasing the ventilation throughout the office will ensure that nobody has to breathe in those allergens and deal with sickness as a result.
- Introduce CCTV everywhere. If you have stairwells in your office building that people like to use, they should be well lit and there should be soaked cameras that are switched on at all times. You may notice the women of the office choose not to use the stairs going towards the car park, and usually it’s because these stairs do not have CCTV so they don’t feel safe. If you make sure that you have cameras everywhere in your office, people will feel safer while they are at work. The exceptions would be places like the bathrooms or the staff showers, you may not want to consider any cameras in there. Instead, that’s a location where there could be alarms that can be pulled in an emergency.
- Look at the lighting options. While we’re discussing lighting, consider the options throughout the office so that people can be healthy while they work. Having good natural lighting where possible throughout the office is going to help everybody to concentrate better and feel healthier while they work. You could arrange the desks so that everybody can see outside, and expose people to sunlight so that their stress levels are kept at a minimum. If there are no windows, or you can’t get everybody access to the windows at the same time, make sure that you are using the correct light bulbs, so that people are able to see their work.
