How Safe Is Your Small Business?

Image Credit

If you're a small business owner, chances are you spin a lot of plates trying to responsibility for every aspect of your company.

One area that often gets overlooked by many, particularly when starting out is health and safety. This fundamental aspect of a companies responsibility should be central to everything that they do, but often profits and other aspects of business operations override it.

Having a policy on how you will manage health and safety within your company is crucial. There are many legal requirements to meet, and you should consider doing a Health and Safety eLearning course, as well as reading guidelines set out by the government.

Risk assessments

You need to assess risk within your organisation regularly. This might come in the form of trip hazards, specific dangers such as handling chemicals right through to the probability of fire

These should be carried out regularly, and any medium to high-risk areas need a plan putting in place to lower the chances of them occurring.

You may want to consider using signage around risky areas. Or hiring contractors to repair or replace anything around the building that might hurt staff, clients or visitors.

Fire Safety

If you've got a team working for you, no matter how small, they need to understand the basics of fire safety and the specific concerns with their workplace. From day one, staff should be trained in the appropriate response to finding a fire, including where alarms, extinguishers and emergency meeting points are located.

This training should be revisited regularly and refreshed. Reminding your team and practising fire drills may only take ten minutes every few months, but it can save lives.

Other Health and Safety Training

In addition to this, your team need to be trained in areas of health and safety specific to their jobs such as using stepladders and knives, lifting and carrying, safe storage of items, food safety and computers.

If you're unsure of the types of things that should be covered, you may wish to consider using a health and safety training company to help you meet the needs of your business.

Keeping records of any training courses that you and your team is essential as this can demonstrate to any local authorities who visit to inspect your business, that you are diligent in meeting your responsibilities in this area.

Testing

Regular checks of your fire alarms, sprinklers and extinguishers are crucial. Very often, problems may arise with these systems without any indication. And if they're not regularly tested, then in an emergency they might fail. Faults should be dealt with as soon as possible and getting items periodically serviced by a qualified engineer is also recommended.

Check fire doors daily to make sure that they open and close well, and make sure that first aid kits are kept full.

Health and safety is not something that should be treated lightly, at times, it may feel as though there are needless rules and regulations, but they are there because of necessity. If incidents have occurred in other businesses, they could also happen in yours.