Health and safety is paramount to the well-being of all employees working in the organisation. Today, many workplaces are faced with hazards and risks hence there is need to put in place measures to ensure the workplace is safe. There are international guidelines on how to ensure health and safety measures are achieved and adhered to. Below are some of those guidelines.

Following health and safety procedures in the workplace help reduce risks of employee injury in the work environment. Training is done to ensure all employees take precautions and follow proper workplace procedures to prevent any possible injuries or harm from accidents that can occur. This helps organisations save on paying for work related injuries and hence it’s good to opt investing on implementing a good health and safety policy.

Equipments, machines, chemicals and certain behaviours in the workplace present a potential of causing hazardous outcomes to workers. Health hazards range from unsafe handling of chemicals to careless handling of machinery leading to dangerous outcomes affecting the workers. The chemicals should be stored on safe places and machines operated with care to avoid such calamities. The organisation should ensure that specific hazardous material handling guidelines are followed and emergency evacuation plans set up to prepare in case of these hazards occurring. 

Companies should have a well laid out guideline of ensuring health and safety laws set up by IOSH and are followed in their premises. This is because if the work environment is not safe the employees will face with many risks that as a company will not be able to bear if they happen. The IOSH managing safely tool is in charge of providing health and safety standards and ensuring companies adhere to them to make workplaces secure and safe. It enforces fines on any organisation that violates the standards put in place and these leads to loss of business. 

Therefore, having safety and health policies impacts on the business as it also attracts customers and reduces cost of operations that can be spent on repairs, claims management litigation and accident investigation. 

Having a health and safety program and implementing good infrastructure that takes care of health and safety needs is an investment for the organisation and managers need to ensure it is in place. To achieve this IOSH has training courses meant for helping managers, supervisors and employees to effectively ensure health and safety is achieved at the workplace. Managing safely is one of the courses and it combines both theory and practice to help the holders of this course to be competent in health and safety practices in their field of work. 

Presence of health and safety encourages more employees to work and enhance their productivity making the organisation more profitable in the process. It should be the goal of every manager to not only manage people and processes but also ensure health and safety procedures are in place and everyone adheres to them.