A guide to keeping your employees safe

As an employer, you have a duty to care for the health and safety of your employees. Failing to do so could result in an accident and, unfortunately, a severe injury. Here, at National Accident Helpline, we look at how you can help ensure employee safety, and what employees should do if injured at work.

As an employer, keeping your employees healthy and safe is not just about responding to accidents, but also being proactive to prevent them from happening in the first place. One way to do this is by performing regular risk assessments. These ensure the workplace is made safer and when doing these you should always remember to take into account any changes to the law. 

Regular risk assessments can help to determine if risks and hazards arise where they were not previously present as the workplace can change. Once you know the risks you can take action to reduce them. It is helpful and sometimes necessary to carry out risk assessments for each different job role.

Providing appropriate health and safety training to your employees is essential to ensure you keep your employees safe. One key area of health and safety training is to keep your employees safe in terms of ergonomics. This helps your workers to not strain their bodies and to reduce injuries such as repetitive strain injuries. 

When you provide health and safety training for your employees, you must ensure it is provided:

• when they start their job
• in a language they understand
• when they change job roles as necessary
• for hazardous substances
• to use specific equipment
• regularly
• specifically for the role
• for general health and safety purposes

There are also a variety of types of health and safety training you can provide, such as training for:

• manual handling 
• slips and falls 
• emergency procedures
• first aid
• fire safety
• machinery

Regular safety reviews and appraisals are crucial for keeping your employees safe at work. This is particularly essential when changes are made to your workplace. For example, you can:

• review audits of your workplace
• give employees feedback about how they adhered to safety in the workplace
• review your health and safety procedures

Creating a good and responsible safety culture in your workplace is crucial to keeping your employees safe at work. One way to do this is to include safety as part of their job description. This not only makes your employees aware of safety but may encourage potential employees to choose your workplace as a place to work. Some jobs may even require an employee to have health and safety qualifications so these will definitely need to be part of the job description. 

A further way to create a safety culture in your workplace is to reinforce this in your employee's work which can include:

• putting this in the company mission
• ensuring you have a clear and accessible health and safety policy
• creating a safety committee
• demonstrating how quickly you respond to incidents
• regular communication about health and safety

Communicating with staff about health and safety at work also includes telling them about how you will communicate emergency dangerous situations in the workplace. It also involves ensuring staff feel that they can openly come to you about needs and safety concerns in the workplace. 

Keeping your employees safe at work means you need to outline the importance of safety to your employees. One way to do this is to make safety at work a fun subject for everyone to get involved with. Of course, we are not suggesting that safety is not a serious issue but making learning about it fun may help outline the importance of safety to your employees. For example, this could include:

• quizzes
• videos

You should also ensure that your employees know how to report risks and hazards in the workplace as this helps keep workers safe at work.  

Following on from making safety at work fun as a way of keeping your employees safe at work, another way is to reward safe behaviour and standards. You can, therefore, include prizes, for example, for those who win games about health and safety at work.

It goes without saying that to keep employees safe in the workplace, they must have the correct equipment to carry out their jobs. This means ensuring the equipment your workers use is maintained and always up to safety standards. This includes regular inspections of equipment.

Providing the correct equipment for the workplace as a method of keeping your employees safe also includes providing safety equipment such as:

• first aid kits
• fire extinguishers

A way to keep your employee safe at work is to ensure that, where required, they wear personal protective equipment (PPE). For example:

• headgear to prevent head injuries
• ear protection to protect hearing in loud working environments
• face mask and shield to prevent infection

Highlighting potential hazards with signs and warnings is a key way to keep your employees safe in the workplace. This can include:

• digital signage
• posters
• messages 

You should also label potential hazards as a way to keep your employees safe in the workplace. And by law, you are required to display the official Health and Safety Poster.

Using signs as a way to keep your employer safe at work includes signs such as:

• fire exit signs
• fires action notice signs
• signs within instructions for on correct procedures

Breaks and rest during work are crucial to help keep your employees safe at work. They can also leave your employees feeling less tense and more energised. So not only are your employees staying safe, they are more productive in the workplace.

^{Last updated 21.06.23}