Three Ways You Can Educate Your Employees To Promote Safety And Avoid Workplace Injuries

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As a small business owner, you can't be too focused on workplace safety. One of the best ways to improve safety is to concentrate on training employees both in safety practices and in making the best use of safety resources available to them. So to increase employee wellbeing and to reduce expenses from employee injury or illness, use a multi-pronged strategy for employee education and training. These three methods can all be used in a complementary fashion to create a well-rounded program for increasing employee safety through training and education.

1. Required safety training

As a responsible employer and business owner, you'll need to find time during the work week to allow each of your employees to spend time watching safety videos, taking training classes, and attending workshops. One way to make sure all employees get training is to require new hires to complete it before they start their new duties, but you should also have ongoing requirements (such as asking each employee to complete a certain number of training hours per year).

2. Supplementary literature

Training events are crucial, but they can't carry all the weight of teaching employees about safety. Remembering throughout the work day things that you've learned in training can be difficult, especially when working at a challenging task. So you'll need to supplement training events with safety reminders throughout the week. Brochures with safety information, posters placed on the walls throughout your facility as reminders, and other types of literature can act as helpful reminders of the safety practices learned elsewhere.

3. Demonstrating safety practices

Some companies don't seem to care whether employees actually work safely throughout the day. If your employees suspect you don't care, they may be tempted to cut corners with safety in order to increase production or convenience. This is a false economy, though, because worker injuries are more likely to happen the more often these shortcuts are taken. In addition to being painful and traumatic for your workers, these types of injuries can cost your company money in a variety of ways, such as through increased workers' comp premiums and the expense of training a temporary worker to take the place of the injured employee. So make sure your employees know you'll call them out if they do something unsafely. Demonstrate your commitment to workplace safety by engaging in safe work practices yourself and impressing on your team leaders how important it is to model and encourage safe behavior.

These three complementary methods can help you increase workplace safety through investing in your employees. Other ways to improve safety include investing in additional safety materials (such as railings and personal protective equipment) and instituting required safety procedures. Contact a lawyer, such as Dennis Kenny Attorney, for more information.   

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11 April 2016

Accident Victims Must Stick Together

When I was injured in a slip and fall accident a few years ago, my family and friends had a hard time relating to the things I was going through. While some people thought that my decision to file a lawsuit was frivolous, others were under the impression that I would walk away as a millionaire. Their lack of personal experience with this type of legal problem left me feeling alone during one of the most difficult times in my life. That is why I decided to start this blog so that accident victims from all over would have somewhere to come to get the information and support that they need. I truly hope that this page can be that place for you.