Workplace Safety Extends To The Office’s Exterior, Too
As an employer, it’s your responsibility to ensure that you provide a safe working environment for your employees, as you likely already know. You’re liable for any negative health consequences employees might suffer in your property, and that goes for the exterior of the workplace, not just the four walls within it. As such, here are a few ways that you need to think about how workplace safety can extend to the immediate surroundings of your property, too.
Keeping an eye out
Though you are not strictly liable for any injuries that befall your employees due to targeted assault or other violent crimes such as an assault, you should be wary of them and willing to do your part in stopping them, all the same. To that end, keeping your employees safe by making the area around your business a safer place can play a key role in that. One of the best ways to do that is to make sure that you invest in security systems such as CCTV, which can record the area and act as a deterrent against criminal activity.
Workplace Safety: Light it Up
Aside from CCTV security systems, it would help if you considered installing plenty of lighting around the business’s exterior. Not only are well-lit areas less likely to be targeted by criminals who don’t want to be too visible in their dealings, but the kind of lighting shown on this product page can improve the area’s overall visibility well. As such, slip and trip hazards are more likely to be seen ahead of time, and employees will feel a good deal safer.
Getting green
Like many business owners, you may have some trees, bushes, and other greenery on your property as a means to brighten up the work environment and make it seem more welcoming. However, believe it or not, these plants can pose a serious risk when not property tended to with the help of an arborist. Branches, leaves, and other debris falling over time can greatly increase the area’s slipperiness and lead to trips. By keeping your greenery safe and neat, you can prevent a considerable number of injuries.
The winter woes
Another hazard that greatly increases the risk of slips, trips, and falls is the conditions that can affect walkways and roads that come with winter. Your local authority might take care of the workplace’s surroundings, but any footpaths and roads that are on your own property are likely going to have to be handled by you, yourself. Applying some salt or grit to these patches to prevent them from becoming slippery with ice isn’t too expensive or too much effort. You just have to remember to do it.
Business safety extends to the exterior of the business property, not just to what goes on inside. Neglect your duties here, and it can affect your whole team’s morale, so don’t let that happen if you can stop it.
