As a small business owner, the last thing you want on your hands is a lawsuit. That’s why it’s essential that when it comes to health and safety, you know what you’re talking about. The problem is, far too many smaller companies don’t take health and safety seriously. Making the mistake of believing that nothing bad will happen to their customers or staff.
However, the truth of the matter is that an accident can happen anywhere. And so, it’s essential that you take your role as a business owner seriously and make health and safety a priority. If you’re unsure what exactly your responsibility is as a business owner, you may struggle to do this. To help you make health and safety a priority for your company, we’ve put together this helpful guide.
What are your responsibilities as a business owner?
As a business owner, your job is to keep your customers and employees safe.
This means having precautions in place to prevent injuries, such as putting a ‘wet floor’ sign out when the floor is wet. It also means ensuring that the building is as safe as possible so that accidents are less likely.
For example, to prevent people slipping on the stairs, it’s a good idea to have high-quality stair treads installed. It’s also essential to ensure that there are fire exit signs posted around and working fire and carbon monoxide alarms in place.
You need to make your business as safe as possible so that everyone who uses it are kept as safe as possible. Accidents may still occur, but by making your building as safe as it could possibly be, you’re less likely to be held accountable for them.
What about as an employer?
While the same applies as an employer – the priority is keeping people safe, it needs to be dealt with in a different way.
You need to not only show employees how to keep themselves safe at work but also how to ensure that customers stay safe. For instance, all employees should know that as soon as a spill is noticed, a ‘wet floor’ sign should immediately placed beside it.
As well as ensuring that accidents are avoided, you also need to find ways to prevent things like back pain in your staff. This means offering employees high-quality desk chairs, for example. Or making sure that all members of staff know how to sit properly while working at a computer.
Not only do you need to prevent accidents but also long-term health problems. Part of this is ensuring that all employees are properly trained in health and safety and know how to use equipment safely. This is especially important if you have employees using dangerous machinery.
There’s a lot more to keeping your employees and customers safe than meets the eye. If you want to keep your customers and employees safe, it’s important to know that. Else, you could end up with a lawsuit against you, which as a new business owner, you don’t want to have to deal with.
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Vinh Van Lam & Stuart Horrex
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