Workplace safety nowadays is key, thanks to the increased dangers that are seemingly littered about the entire workplace at times.
Whether you spend time at dangerous work sites, travel alone for work-related events, work a night shift or some other unusual time rather than the standard 9-5, it’s always important to keep your mind on safety so that you don’t end up injured. We’ve put together a list of tips to help you avoid an injury, but just a heads up, if you are injured, you’ll want to get in touch with some personal injury lawyers to help you put together a case to get compensation for your work injury.
Tips for work safety
Be aware of your surroundings
Being aware of your surroundings is key to making sure you stay safe, both in a sense of knowing the general hazards of your workplace as well as any specific hazardous situations that only you might encounter. This can be either from physical objects such as machinery or from other circumstances such as potentially getting RSI (repetitive strain injury) from working on a computer.
Take regular breaks
A lot of work-related injuries and illnesses happen due to the person being tired and burnt-out and not being fully alert to their surroundings. If you can, take regular breaks to ensure that you’re fresh and ready to tackle any problem at work. If this isn’t possible, try and schedule your most difficult tasks for when your concentration is best, which can be at any point of the day depending on how you feel on that particular day.
Use machinery and tools properly
This may seem like an obvious point to make, but it’s always worth reiterating. Make sure that you use any machinery properly, and don’t take any shortcuts or anything that’s a risk. Safety guards and suchlike on power tools are there to protect you, not hinder you, and it’s not exactly fun to have to go to the hospital when you’ve lopped your fingers off on a band saw, or managed to nail your hand to a 2×4 with a nail gun. So keep the safety guard on, and don’t take stupid risks with your machinery or tools.
Keep your emergency exits accessible and clear
In the event of an accident or something similar, such as a fire or a chemical spill, you’ll want to be leaving the workplace quickly. If they’re blocked up, you’re not going to be able to leave quickly and this might end up causing an even worse situation than had originally started. So make sure that your emergency exits are clear and can be exited through quickly if needs be. Additionally, relating to the above point, make sure that all your machinery can be easily switched off if the worst comes to happen and an accident happens with a piece of machinery that you’re working on.
Wear the correct safety equipment
Again, this might seem like an obvious one, but if you’re working with power tools and somewhere that requires safety equipment, you’ll want to wear the right safety equipment. Steel toe-capped boots and a high visibility jacket are often useful in every situation that involves physicality, and often you’ll need other specialist safety equipment to make sure you stay safe.
Report unsafe conditions to your manager
And lastly, if you’re working in somewhere that’s particularly unsafe, such as a construction site, or even in a relatively safe environment such as an office, you’ll need to report anything that crops up that could be potentially unsafe, whether this is a lot of planks lying around haphazardly, or the printer in the corner has suddenly start sparking and smoking. Make sure your manager knows as soon as safely possible, so that they can take care of the unsafe conditions as soon as possible.
We’ve covered a lot above, but if you think we’ve missed any obvious points out, why not let us know in the comments below? We’d be interested to see if there’s anything we’re missing.
