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Finding and removing any dangers in the workplace is one of the most important parts of your role as a boss. It’s up to you to make sure that you’re following health and safety procedures properly so your employees are always safe while they’re working. In some businesses, that isn’t too difficult. An office setting, for example, doesn’t have too many dangers and it’s quite easy to stay on top of health and safety. But if you’re running a manufacturing business, there are a lot more potential hazards that you need to deal with.

If you don’t manage your health and safety properly and one of your employees ends up getting injured, you may find yourself in the middle of a very costly lawsuit. On top of that, you may lose a good employee for a while if they’re seriously injured. If the accident was a direct result of your lack of health and safety procedures, you might end up being fined for breaching the law as well. That’s why health and safety is so important, even if it can be a bit of a pain sometimes. If you’re running a manufacturing company and you find yourself struggling to deal with health and safety issues, here are some simple tips to help you along the way.

Training Is Key

You probably already know that training new staff properly so they know how to operate machinery safely is essential. But a lot of people don’t put enough time and resources into continued training for their existing staff members. This is important because people always slip into bad working practices after a while. A regular training session to refresh everybody’s memory once a year or so will ensure that everybody is always following procedure to the letter.

Sometimes, processes change or you might introduce a new piece of machinery. It’s important that you’re giving specific training sessions when those changes occur so your employees know exactly what they’re doing and how to perform their jobs safely.

Health And Safety Notices

Another simple way to make sure that people aren’t forgetting proper health and safety procedures is to put notices up around the workplace. Put some basic notices on or near all of the equipment with general guidelines about safe use. You also need to have signs reminding people of what protective gear they should be wearing while they work. That way, if one of your employees decides that they’re going to ignore any of the health and safety procedures and they get injured, you won’t be liable for it.

Good Flooring

When people think about accidents, they’re usually focused on malfunctions with machines causing injury. That is a big problem, of course, but don’t forget about the simpler injuries like slips and falls. Poorly maintained floors that have a slippery surface or have lots of cracks and dents increase the risk of trips and falls. That’s why you need a polished concrete floor in your warehouse and you need to make sure that it’s maintained properly so it maintains its non-slip properties. Properly polished concrete is also very hard wearing so it’ll be able to handle a lot of wear and tear without getting too damaged.

Be Careful With Second Hand Equipment

Manufacturing equipment is incredibly expensive but you can save yourself quite a lot of money if you buy second hand, however, you have to be very careful. There are plenty of great second hand machines out there that will do the job just as well as new ones would. But equally, there are a lot of damaged ones that are likely to be dangerous when you’re using them. Some of the older models won’t have anywhere near as many safety features on them either so, even if they’re in good condition, they could be dangerous.

That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t buy second hand machines at all, you just need to know exactly what you’re buying. Get some of your employees to look at the machine and test it to make sure that it’s all in good working order before you agree to buy it. You should also do some research into the safety features on the newer model compared with a second hand one and see whether it might be worth spending a bit more to get a new one. Finally, you should always make sure that you’re buying it from a reputable supplier.

If you stick to these rules, you can make sure that your manufacturing company is always following health and safety procedure to the letter.