Every manufacturer should strive to have a great safety track record. After all, if you have a reputation as a safe place to work, employees will want to work for you.
Ensuring safety in your manufacturing plant will help you avoid costly injuries, lost time, lost productivity, and even lawsuits, fines, and investigations. Most of all, you should want to keep your workers safe in your workplace. They’re important members of your team. Their success at work translates into your success in the market. Happy, healthy workers should be a priority for any manufacturer.
So what can you do to improve worker safety in your manufacturing plant? You can follow some of these worker safety tips.
Provide Training
Provide thorough safety training for all employees, whether they are temporary or permanent. Take a look at the safety training your provincial body requires you to provide to your employees. Safety is everyone’s responsibility (the employer, staffing agency, and worker).
Be sure to offer comprehensive safety training to new hires. You should provide a refresher course of training to employees who have been with your company for a while. A refresher course on safety is a must, especially with updates made to WHMIS, AODA, etc.
Everyone deserves to be trained, and everyone deserves to work in a safe environment.
Provide Protective Gear
Many manufacturing plants contain hazardous materials of some sort. There may be fumes from a chemical you use in a process. An example is paint fumes in a car manufacturing plant. While you may not immediately think of these fumes as hazardous, over time, they can affect your employees’ health. Another example that may not come to mind immediately is chemical cleaners, which can cause burns or poisoning if inhaled or ingested.
While education is a key part of ensuring safety, you must also provide personal protective equipment (PPE) for employees who may come in contact with hazardous materials or conditions. PPE is designed to enhance worker safety. Properly educating your workers about how to use it further enhances safety in the workplace.
Guard Machines
Most manufacturing plants include a variety of machinery. Some of these machines can be dangerous.
Guarding machines is one way to reduce these incidents and increase worker safety. Any machines with revolving barrels or drums should have a guarding mechanism designed to prevent movement when the mechanism isn’t engaged. Machines may also be anchored to prevent them from moving during use.
It is important to regularly check to make sure the guard machines are working properly at your manufacturing plant. Train every employee about how to engage a guard machine if there is ever an emergency.
Encourage Reporting
Employees should be encouraged to always report unsafe conditions to their supervisors. Management and supervisors should take action immediately to improve safety conditions.
Encourage all workers to put safety first. Employees do have the right to refuse unsafe work. Employers have a responsibility to ensure their work environment is as safe as possible for employees.
Using these worker safety tips can help you improve safety in your manufacturing plant. All of these tips are necessary actions to take to ensure safety at your manufacturing plant.
If you have any additional questions regarding safety at your worksite, please contact Liberty Staffing.