Maintaining a safe environment for your employees is pivotal when it comes to their happiness, well-being, and productivity. Even if you think you’ve scoured your building for safety concerns, consider the ways in which you can create an even more optimal, stress-free, and safe environment
Provide Proper Heating and Cooling
When you think about safety at work, you may never consider the actual atmosphere. However, temperatures that are too hot or cold can prove dangerous for employees, especially individuals with certain conditions. If your employees are always shivering or complaining that they’re nauseated and dizzy from the excessive heat, then you need to evaluate the heating and cooling systems. Make sure it’s a temperature most can agree on, and that keeps your workers happy in any season.
Panic Buttons
Unfortunately, today’s world brings it with the threat of shootings and other such terror attacks. Providing employees with a fast way to contact the authorities can save their lives. For example, you may want to install panic buttons under each of the desks. Employees or receptionists can hit it and directly contact the police if a situation arises.
Security System
You might think a home security package or app is appropriate only for domestic dwellings, but plenty of businesses have security systems too. Some are even adapted from home security packages directly. You might wonder, do ADT cameras work with other home security systems?, or how having smartphone control capabilities will work with your building, but some domestic options might actually suit your needs better. While you probably can’t have it fully armed during the day since employees walk in and out, you can keep the windows and any secondary entrances armed. This type of system is also useful for employees who work alone in the early morning or late-night hours. They can keep the system entirely on until other employees are present or until they leave for the night.
Fire Security and Other Additional Security Elements
In addition to a security system that protects against break-ins, you should have one that tests for fire and smoke. You can also look into systems that test for carbon monoxide, natural gas, and floods. Of course, you want to have the proper devices in place to alert employees to these issues, but security systems can allow the proper authorities to be contacted in the event of an emergency.
Security Cameras
Employees may not feel safe when they are walking to or from their cars in the dark, and security cameras can provide them with an additional level of security. You should make sure to put up signs saying that security cameras are present. These signs can help to scare away potential attackers. In the unfortunate event that an incident does occur, the cameras can help to identify the criminal.
Background Checks
You want to keep your employees safe from outside forces, but you also need to work to protect them from internal issues. If you aren’t conducting background checks on your employees, you could be unknowingly allowing dangerous people to work for you. In fact, these people might eventually get fired and come back to retaliate upon the company. While conducting background checks cannot tell you everything about a person’s past or what he or she will do in the future, it is a helpful step.
Building Construction
If your walls are filled with toxic paints from decades ago, if the electrical system is a fire hazard, or if the wooden floors are sure to give employees splinters, then you should start to think about doing some repairs to the inside of the building. When tackling them all at once is too much to handle, make a list of the most important ones. Let employees know what is going on and what areas of the building they should avoid.
Workshops
While you have a great deal of responsibility when it comes to providing a safe workplace for your employees, you also want them to contribute. Provide workshops every once in a while to ensure your staff members are updated on what should happen to keep the place safe for everyone and what they can do to contribute to that goal.
Employee safety must be one of your priorities, and you can start to create a safer environment today.
