A startup is a huge responsibility for you, the entrepreneur. You have to garner the support of all employees and motivate them to perform without let up. A safe and healthy work environment is a prerequisite for your startup to succeed. You will need to provide a workplace that encourages safety habits at all times.
Here are 6 steps that you can take to make your startup workplace a safe place to work.
- Make safety your mission and vision
You have heard of a company’s mission and vision. You can make safety a part of your vision and mission statement. Going into mission mode on safety would entail all employees to be on their toes as far as safety is concerned. You can set a time-table, say quarterly, when every employee is taken through a drill on safety measures. You could make it more interesting by invoking outside experts to interact with your employees.
- Conduct a hazard audit
You can conduct a hazard audit and map out all equipment and locate them suitably to minimize injury due to accidents. These could be from jutting cables, protruding aerials and antennae, low overhead sign boards and exposed electrical connections. You should assess the risks associated with each employee in the workplace and err on the safe side so that you minimize the risks for that particular employee.
- Provide adequate sick leave
Often, you and your team will be caught up in the euphoria of the startup environment and you will reach the workplace even if you are a little under the weather. In today’s environment, viruses and communicable diseases pose a threat from sick employees to other healthy employees in the workplace by infecting them. This causes disruption in workloads. One way to overcome the threat of sickness is to be liberal with sick leave so that employees are encouraged to stay at home till they are well. They could work remotely using the power of technology effectively. Additionally, you could train people to undertake multiple roles so that absence is not felt too acutely.
- Train employees on safe work habits
Being a startup, your employees would be attuned to working with computers. This means they will be in front of the computer screen and possibly use earphones continuously. These pose health hazards in the form of wrist sprain, back aches, stiff joints, eye strain and hearing loss. It is incumbent upon you to provide ergonomic seating, screen filters, noise suppressors and periodic mandatory rest periods for the employees to ease their strain.
- Prevent trips, falls and slips
According to a law firm Rosenfeld Injury Lawyers, those who disregard public safety are typically held fully accountable when their negligence results in an injury, and that accountability is costly. This can cause untold misery to you because of the impending lawsuit and the related costs associated with fighting the lawsuit. A lawsuit can have a devastating effect on your company’s morale and consequently on the success of your startup. You should take the safety and health precautions very seriously as statistics indicate that one million people suffer injuries due to unintentional slip and fall out of which 17,000 die. It is imperative that you should bestow enough focus on safety measures in your workplace.
- Encourage employees to offer safety suggestions
Since your employees are the ones who work in your organization it is prudent to involve them in the safety precautions that you propose. You will be surprised at the range of suggestions that come forth. You should personally read all the suggestions and implement those that are meaningful. Ensure that the persons making the suggestions that get implemented are acknowledged suitably.
The above six steps are just a few of the several more that you would come by through your own and your employees’ efforts. If you make the safety effort a participative one there is no doubt that you would succeed in making your workplace a safe one.
