To ensure maintenance of highest safety standards are practiced in the workspace, proper health and safety standards have to be maintained. There are several elements to make a safety audit successful. One of the most important is the HSE software. Followed by that are other steps that can complement it. This takes us to examine ten important factors in the preparation of an HSE audit checklist.
- Choose a competent admin
The first thing you need to do when preparing an HSE audit checklist is to assign someone the task of ensuring that your company meets up with health and safety responsibilities. Your choice of admin must have the skills, practice, and understanding required for him to deliver without flaws.
If you run a simple business organization that comes with little risk tendencies, you can decide to monitor your HSE responsibilities yourself or assign the task to one or more of your existing staffs. This will save you the cost of the purchase of expert advice.
If on the other hand, you doubt your ability to manage health and safety aspect of your business or its complex nature would require more than usual attention from you, it is best you hire the services of an expert in this aspect.
- Include details of health and safety in your business policy
When you go into details of who does what and how it is done on matters regarding HSE in your business policy, it sends a clear message to both your clients and staff – you are committed to a safe working environment for your staffs and the clients are sure to receive quality services from a team of well protected staff.
Enforcement of business policy is also very important. It will build a high level of awareness and those in the position of responsibilities will always be on alert to discharge their duties in ensuring a safe working environment.
- Stabilize potential risks in your business
Most times, risks at the workplace can’t be completely ruled out. But they can be reduced by putting some measures in place. Simply put, stabilizing possible risks in your business involves taking practical steps to have a safe working environment.
This is a function of foresight. Your work experience and experiences of businesses in the same niche are sources of possible safety issues that may come up and steps you can to cancel or reduce the possibility of it coming up.
Business growth comes with new adjustments. It may be the purchase of new equipment, a change in your business model. You can do no wrong by reviewing risk assessments in your business from time to time.
To access risks in your workplace, you do well by making a physical assessment of your facilities and see which of them has potentials to cause hazards.
That being done, you filter out the major risks and map out steps to having them resolved. However, you should gauge how serious a risk it actually is before thinking of ways in which it can be aborted.
- Discuss with your staffs
It is important that you speak to your employees and get their opinion on the subject matter, they would likely point your attention to areas you failed to notice.
To get the best from the opinion of your staffs, you should be free with them. Allow them to talk about what they feel concerning health and safety, its relationship with the business, risk factors and control measures.
Your employees are in the best position to understand risk factors in your business because in most cases, they are the ones who do the dirty job. Make sure you engage them in discussions.
- Train and equip your staffs
Work safety is a collective responsibility of all your members of staffs. They will only develop this mindset if only you provide them with clear safety instructions and information.
When providing training and information, keep them simple and easy to understand. Their level of understanding will determine how effective they are going to be at implementing the instructions. Also, be more interactive and less instructive. Ask them how they feel about instructions and how practical they think it is.
Keeping records of training will help you determine when your staffs need follow-up training, how much training is okay, and what form of training is needed. This will help them maintain the HSE standard they have been able to build.
- Be Responsible for The Exact Office Equipment.
Before employing workers, ensure that all provisions that would make them work comfortably and perform optimally are set on the ground.
Welfare facilities such as lockers, toilets, hand wash basins will make workers relaxed enough and won’t have to look forward to closing hours to enjoy certain conveniences. Facilities designed to take care of health issues should be available in the workspace. Waste bins should be located at strategic locations to enhance a clean workspace. Buildings should be well ventilated to prevent the exchange of communicable diseases.
Safety issues should always be addressed in the provision of facilities for your workspace. For example, Hallways and passages should be traffic free. Laws relating to workplaces should be respected and followed to detail.
- Make provision for first aid treatment
Illness and injuries cannot be ruled out in the workspace. First aid provisions could actually turn out to be life-saving in some cases. It is your responsibility to ensure that your staffs are attended to immediately if an emergency comes up. This is why it is important to also have first aid training for your staff in addition.
The level and types of equipment provided for this purpose should depend on your type of business. A construction firm will need more first aid facility than a real estate firm but basically, your HSE rating should meet up with the standard required by your industry.
- Parade the health and safety law placard
You can parade this in strategic positions in your workspace. The aim is to constantly remind your staffs of the importance of health and safety in the workspace.
The health and safety law poster reminds each of your staffs that the government holds the safety and health of its citizens in high esteem. Hence, a breach of the law in this aspect would not speak well for your business.
- Get your business insured
Liability insurance is important to your business especially if you have employees. If they get injured in the line of duty, it Is possible they sue you. Your mind can only be at rest if you already purchased an employer’s liability insurance. Do not risk being at the risk of your staffs, get insured today.
- Get updated.
Keep up with trends, news, and happenings in your industry. Social media platforms, conferences, seminars are all avenues to get updated with HSE trends in your industry, make good use of them.
Be Better with our Software
Paper-based audits are slow and less effective. Your auditing task is best organized when you choose reliable audit software. Beakon audit software falls perfectly into this description. Its flexible design makes it useful, even when you are on the move as it has a mobile version.
Beakon audit software has a host of other functions that make it the right software to up your auditing game. Sign up with today and get started with a free trial.
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