Health and safety at work is crucial for all businesses to consider. Employers are responsible for keeping their employees safe and need to continually consider the health and safety needs of their staff. A recent shift towards flexible working and remote working, partly driven by the COVID-19 pandemic, has meant that it is more difficult for employers to do this for a number of reasons. Employees may be working at home or elsewhere, and even keeping track of who is or isn’t in the workplace on any given day may be difficult. This means that health and safety today often needs to be managed both within the workplace and outside of it. So let’s find out HOW TO IMPROVE HEALTH AND SAFETY AT WORK?
GET UP-TO-DATE ON REGULATIONS AND COMPLIANCE
Organisations that wish to improve health and safety at work should begin by ensuring they are up-to-date on the latest regulatory guidance. The minimum that your organisation needs to do is follow the law and put any measures required for compliance in place. The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) website is a good place to start when looking for guidance. It is also the place to go for a number of other needs, from applying for licences, reporting a problem in the workplace, and reporting workplace accidents.
HEALTH AND SAFETY FOR REMOTE WORKERS
Remote working is becoming more common. Around the world, 52% of employees work remotely once a week. In the UK, 46.6% of people in employment worked from home in April 2020, although the majority was due to the pandemic. However, many people will be remaining in remote work of some kind even as people return to work. Managing health and safety for remote workers can be a challenge. Employers are still responsible for the health and safety of their remote workers, but when your employee’s workspace is in their home, it complicates matters. However, there are steps that you can take to protect home workers.
Some of the things that you can do to improve health and safety for remote workers include:
- Check in regularly with people working alone
- Encourage healthy screen use
- Ensure employees have ergonomics working spaces, including comfortable chairs and adjustable desks
- Allow employees to take home equipment such as keyboards or mice
MENTAL HEALTH IN THE WORKPLACE
Taking care of the physical safety of employees is important, but mental health in the workplace is also becoming a growing concern. This is true both of employees working on-site and those working remotely. Employers can help employees to care for their mental health in multiple ways. You can provide support for employees and encourage them to use the resources that you offer.
With remote employees, it’s especially important to check in with them regularly and watch out for the signs of stress. Helping to prevent isolation is something that employers can do too. Try to keep remote workers connected, whether through work communication or organising virtual social events.
Health and safety at work should be taken seriously. With 38.8 million working days lost to work-related ill health and injuries in 2019-20, it pays to take care of your staff.
