As a manager or employer, ensuring safety at your factory or manufacturing plant should be your topmost priority. No matter what, you can never put a price on your workers’ lives. That is why it is crucial to ensure a safe working environment at these places.
To ensure the safety of your workers, here are a few tips that you should consider.
#1 Ensuring Proper Training and Education
Proper training and education come a long way in ensuring worker safety. Your factory should follow the standards set by OSHA – Occupational Safety and Health Administration – while preparing the training module. You need to train your workers to handle all the tools and types of machinery related to their line of work. You also need to teach them about the factory layout, emergency procedures, escape routes, and so on. No one should be allowed to work at the factory or plant without passing the required training modules.
#2 Providing Protective Gear
You must provide every worker with their own set of PPE (Personal Protective Equipment). The clothing or gear present in these PPE sets will vary depending on the type of industry. Some of the most common items included in these sets are helmets, goggles, face masks, gloves, boots, etc. The material used in the manufacturing of these items will also depend on the type of the industry. For instance, the gloves used in manufacturing chemical products need to be different from those used in making steel.
#3 Stationing Safety Inspectors
One of the best ways to ensure safety in the workplace is by stationing safety inspectors on the factory grounds. Their job is simple – to make sure everyone is following all the safety guidelines. These inspectors will be responsible for checking everyone’s PPE, workstations, and other safety parameters. You can also give them the task to inspect the plant or factory to identify hazardous or unsafe working conditions.
#4 Providing Training for Operating Specific Machinery
Some workers specialize in operating or maintaining specific machinery. They should be trained separately to handle these machines. In most cases, representatives from the companies or manufacturers of those machines will be tasked with training the workforce. Your duty, as the employer or manager, is to oversee the training sessions. Make sure your workers are attending these sessions and are following everything that their instructors are saying.
#5 Ensuring Safe Floors
Slipping on the factory floors can lead to a lot of bad situations. Hence, it is important to use anti-slip floor paints from an industrial paint supplier. These paints have industrial coatings that are resistant to certain chemicals and toxic stains. They keep the surfaces on your factory floors safe from chemical spillage and also make them slip-resistant.
#6 Regular Emergency Drills
Emergency drills help your employees stay on their toes. They can be used to see how well-trained the workforce is and how well they handle emergencies. You should conduct these drills at least once every six months. In some cases, you might need to arrange them once every three months. Fire drills are the most common types of drills conducted in factories and manufacturing plants. Drills should also be arranged for other emergency scenarios if possible.
#7 Checking for Faulty Machinery and Other Factory Utilities
You will often read news stories about fires breaking out at different factories due to the malfunctioning of various types of machinery. Accidents at manufacturing plants are also caused due to gas leaks and electrical problems. These faulty machinery and other factory utilities are often the main reasons behind workplace disasters. Therefore, you must regularly check your factory equipment for faults. Keep a dedicated maintenance team to do so for you. They should stick to a rigorous routine to make sure that no faulty machine or power line is being operated at the factory.
#8 Ensuring Regular Presence of a Nurse or Doctor
By ensuring all the different safety practices, you can reduce the number of workplace accidents to a great extent. However, there will always be one or two incidents that require urgent medical attention. For such cases, a nurse or doctor should always be present at the site. They should be able to attend to the wounded or sick whenever needed. You should also have arrangements to take your workers to a hospital in case things go from bad to worse.
Cross-check all these points with your existing safety measures. Update them if necessary. Whatever you do, do not make any compromises on your workers’ well-being.
