One of the first mistakes that a lot of entrepreneurs make is believing that, in order for their company to become safer, all they have to do is invest a bit in office preparation. Nonetheless, slapping hazard signs everywhere, ensuring that there’s no slip risk and a few similar upgrades are not enough to raise the office safety to a satisfactory level, even though they do help. In order for the safety of your employees to reach its pinnacle, you need to make sure that your HR department is up to this task and help them make the workplace of your small Australian business much safer. Here are several tips.

Keeping records of accidents

Before we even start, some may dismiss this step, seeing as how it’s reactive and implies that the accident already occurred. Nonetheless, accidents are an inevitability even in the safest workplace in the world. The probability of human error can never be excluded from this equation, which is why you might need to take a bit more reactive stance towards this. For starters, you need to maintain an accident book. This will allow you to learn from previous mistakes and prevent them from ever happening again. Needless to say, keeping records of accidents is a task that your HR should be in charge of.

Proper employee communication

Another thing that your HR needs to do in order to protect your employees is to properly communicate with them. First of all, your employees are the ones who are “in the field” which means that they might be the first ones to notice if something is potentially dangerous. If they have the right channel to send this information through, they’ll report it, thus giving your safety officers an adequate feedback. If not, an obvious and potentially catastrophic accident may take place later on. The tragedy in this lies in the fact that this would have been completely avoidable if there was only someone out there to listen.

Nonetheless, not all of this is about feedback alone. You see, communication is a two-way street and if your employees need to be informed of a new trend, policy or rule, your HR should take this over, as well. Workplace safety is the responsibility of everyone in the workplace, which makes it into the responsibility of both employers and employees. Your HR team should be able to present this fact in the simplest, yet, the most efficient manner possible.

Some additional steps

At the very end, you need to understand that not every single thing you do about safety falls on the HR. For instance, assigning a safety supervisor as an immediate representative in charge of this particular field is definitely a great idea. Moreover, sometimes a policy needs to be coupled with a new purchase, installation or a security system. For instance, if you were to introduce an unwavering guest policy, it wouldn’t be as effective without also installing a fence and hiring a security guard. Sure, you would first have to look for quality security fencing Australia options and outsource or hire personnel, yet, it would, once again, be the role of your HR to break the necessity of this move to your employees.

Planning for emergency situations

A regular accident often happens as an isolated case. One or several of your employees gets injured, while the rest of the office is in a position to help them. Nonetheless, what happens when everyone’s safety is endangered at the same time? We’re of course talking about emergency situations and scenarios. This too needs to be a topic that involves your HR representatives. To make the long story short, your HR department needs to be the one composing your emergency preparedness action plan.

Handling an issue of insurance

At the very end, you need to think about the safety of your company’s property, as well, seeing as how this is usually tightly connected to the issue of employee safety. This is why you need to think about where insurance brokers fit in this story. You see, it’s the job of your HR to determine the validity of the offer on the table. The simplest way to describe this would be to say that your HR might want to work a bit more tightly with these brokers in order to use their consultative services.

In conclusion

As you can see, when you wrap up all the workplace innovation and upgrade all of these measures, it will be up to your HR to plug in all the leaks and gaps in your security system. Therefore, you need to make sure that these positions are occupied by the right people, as well as to keep investing in your team in term of equipment and seminars. Either way, before you can turn your office into a much safer place you need to know what conditions you need to meet in order to make this happen.