Factories should provide a safe working environment for the people that work there. Just a single injury in a factory or industrial environment could translate to thousands of pounds in 'workers compensation costs and lost productivity. The factory could also find itself under increased scrutiny by the Health and Safety Executive.
Here are 6 effective ways of improving safety in factories and industrial environments:
1. Continuous Training
Employees should first take a particular number of training hours every year. New employees can learn about workplace safety basics as well as the proper use of machines. Refresher courses will benefit older workers since they help them drop some of the bad habits they might have picked up over time.
2. Visual Aids
Safety posters play a role much greater than being a placeholder on the factory's bulletin boards. They usually depict a cartoon of a worker doing something unsafe and absurd and use humor to emphasise the consequences of not paying attention to proper protocol. When visual aids are accompanied by the continuous training you will start seeing a change in attitude. The safe behaviours will become habits once the safety culture grows in your factory.
3. Proper Equipment
Upgrading equipment in the factory can prevent jams or other malfunctions that may require manual intervention. Newer machines can easily stop or turn off on its own if they detect foreign objects inside or near it. They also usually come with additional safety features that allow for easy maintenance or cleaning without the risk of injury to workers.
4. Encouraging Safe Working Areas For All Workers
It is much easier for workers to be injured or hurt on a cluttered factory floor or a wet one. It is also much easier to get chemicals on skin or inhale them if they are allowed to linger on work surfaces or in the air. Part of the efforts to get organised and clean should be to ensure that hazardous materials are properly labelled and emergency wash stations should also be labelled to make them easier to find.
5. Creating A Work Safety Team
Worker safety teams should be put in charge of conducting training sessions and spending time identifying potential workplace hazards. The teams can also take time to check whether the safety policies are followed and make recommendations regarding how they can be improved. The safety teams should ideally have the autonomy to do their jobs effectively and avoid conflicts of interest between those tasked with the responsibility of providing objective safety results and the management.
6. Provide a Comfortable Working Environment
A comfortable worker is a productive worker, so make sure there is adequate lighting, heating and flooring. Standing workers especially are at risk of lower limb stress if they have to stand on hard floors all day. Rubber floor mats, also called anto-fatigue mats help to reduce stress and strain, especially lower limbs. Another article we published recently found standing workers were at risk, especailly in industrial and factory environments.