Health & Safety: Why It Is Important For Your Business

Health & safety is an important issue to be aware of and has been a topic discussed and practiced in many environments during our lives. In high school, you would have practiced what to do in a fire drill. Even at home, your parents thought you how to be safe around dangerous situations such as hot surfaces.  

Learning how to be safe in our immediate environment doesn’t stop at we get older especially when it comes to the workplace. As we have mentioned before, workplace accidents happen every single year in North America regardless of what industry you work in. That is why occupational health and safety is so important. 

Occupational health and safety refer to the programs, guidelines and rules that protect the safety, health and welfare of any person that is working or visiting a business’s establishment. A clearly defined health and safety training program aims to teach others how to create the ultimate safe work environment so as to reduce accidents and injuries.  

The Occupational Health and Safety Act (OHSA) sets out the duties of all parties in the workplace when it comes to protecting the welfare of others and outlines the procedures for dealing with workplace hazards.  

Accessibility: Why It Matters?

As our workplaces become more diverse, it is essential that our offices, schools, construction sites, hospitals and more take accessibility into consideration from a health and safety perspective. This not only means ensuring physical accessibility such as wheelchair ramps, accessible washroom facilities and braille signage. But, it should also encompass digital accessibility such as assistive technical devices.  

Accessibility is a highly important aspect of creating a safe workplace environment. Not only does it ensure that all individuals regardless of their abilities can work without risk of injury or harm. It also fosters a more productive and inclusive company culture. When it comes to workplace health and safety training, all employees should be aware of the need to acknowledge what accessibility is and how it impacts individuals with disabilities.  

Fire Awareness: Why It Matters? 

A fire can happen in any workplace environment. Under the law, all employees must have adequate training to make sure that they behave and act accordingly in the event of a fire. Fire safety awareness is a vital health and safety training priority as it equips individuals with the basics of properties of fire, the measures that need to be taken if a fire breaks out, how to identify fire hazards within the workplace and most importantly how to prevent fire outbreaks.  

This training includes information such as identifying your nearest fire emergency, the importance of keeping the workplace clean and smoking only in the designated areas as defined by your company.  

Ergonomics: Why It Matters? 

Ergonomics is another area of health and safety that should not be ignored. In many industries, spending long days sitting at a desk on a computer is part of normal working life. However, without the correct knowledge of how to sit without the correct posture while working, this can be a cause of workplace injuries.  

Practicing ergonomics has the ability to make your job easier and your workplace safer. Safety and ergonomics both play a role in improving the productivity of employees while protecting their welfare. When covered as part of a health and safety program, it makes sure that employees know the ergonomic risk factors. While also holding employers accountable for providing their staff with a safe workplace that won’t cause physical injury.  

WHMIS: Why It Matters?  

WHMIS stands for Workplace Hazardous Materials Information System. Training in WHMIS as part of ensuring the safety of your employees makes sure that workers who handle or deal with dangerous material such as chemicals, gases and hazardous substances know the correct procedures to follow and can accurately read safety labels.  

Working with dangerous chemicals is extremely dangerous. WHMIS can help employees in these working situations to protect their health by educating them on how to handle materials correctly and how to avoid contact between chemicals and the skin.  

Under federal law, all employees that do or could come into contact with hazardous material need to receive WHMIS training.  

Mental Health & Substance Abuse Prevention

While fire safety and knowing how to work safely while on a construction site are two things that come to mind when health and safety training is mentioned, so must mental health & substance abuse prevention.  

Every year, stressors in the workplace contribute to mental health problems that many employees face on a daily basis. In some cases, these mental health problems can lead to or be a side effect of substance abuse of alcohol, cannabis and other drugs. When employers are designing health and safety programs for their company it is vital that these two factors are kept in mind.  

Many training courses that are centred on improving and protecting the welfare of employees now educate individuals on how to identify risks in the workplace that contribute to mental health and the policies around substance use in the workplace. 

COVID: At The Top Of All Companies Health & Safety List 

Now, in the wake of COVID-19, staying healthy and safe in the workplace will be a higher priority than ever before. As we are entering a new age of coworking with others, it will be important that all employees receive the correct training to ensure that they protect themselves and others in the workplace.  

This is could be anything from the correct way to sanitize shared common spaces such as washrooms and kitchen areas to how to keep your designated workplace free from hazards that may affect the health of another. All companies are entering a new era of working where health is top of every person’s mind.  

The government of Ontario has shared a helpful COVID-19 safety checklist for workplaces to ensure your workplace includes the necessary key elements in your COVID‑19 workplace safety plan to help protect workers, customers and the general public.

What Is Business Compliance?

All companies need to ensure that they stay compliant. But what exactly is business compliance?  

This refers to the act of following the laws and policies that govern and regulate how your company should operate. This includes abiding by pertinent laws and regulations that govern how each employee should behave in the workplace in certain situations such as handling customers’ sensitive and personal data information and how to communicate with other employees.  

In order for all companies to stay compliant with these rules and regulations, all employees must receive compliance training. This form of employee training educates employees on the policies that govern their workplace and teaches them the importance of abiding by these laws.   

How Do I Ensure My Business Is Up To Date?

If you want to make sure that your business stays up to date on the latest health and safety matters, then providing staff with workplace safety training is essential. The only way to truly offer employees a safe environment to work in is to guarantee that they have the skills and tools needed to effectively identify and eliminate workplace hazards.   

Here at Training Company, we offer an extensive training course that will bring all of your employees up to speed on the areas of health and safety that impact workplaces on a daily basis. Depending on the industry you operate in, we can tailor training content to suit the needs of your employees. Interested in hearing more? Get in touch with our team today for more information.