Making sure your office building is safe for your employees is imperative. No business wants to face heavy lawsuits because of their negligence. In a lengthy piece of legislation, the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 states that its purpose is ‘to assure safe and healthful working conditions for men and women’. This can be an ambitious task to accomplish but below we will examine some of the places you can start to get your business up to scratch – we will also discuss ways you can make your office COVID-19 safe.
Fire Hazards
You must take steps to reduce potential fire hazards in the workplace. Employees should be able to exit the building through clearly labeled fire escapes, and in a calm and collected manner. You should also make sure that your office has the best fire systems, so head over to APFE Corp. Fire Protection Services to get sorted; they even offer fire awareness courses for staff.
Lay of the Land
When considering the floorplan of your office, you need to make a high impact on productivity but without damaging the integrity of health and safety regulation. Make sure that all areas are accessible and within clear access to fire escapes.
Lighting the Land
It’s all well and good having a well laid out office space that adheres to fire safety and appropriate layout procedures, but if you can’t physically see, what’s the point?
You need to make sure that all of your rooms and corridors are well lit. This means taking care of flickering broken lights promptly. You can boost productivity here as well by lighting as much of the office with classic sunlight.
Health and Hygiene
It’s vital, especially now, that you provide enough clean washrooms to accommodate the number of employees you have. Facilities should be regularly cleaned and come with sufficient soap and hand-drying provisions.
Further, you can consider providing a high-quality ventilation system to give clean air to safeguard your employees’ health. Provisions for staff eating areas as well as water stations are also important factors to incorporate into your office design.
Touch on Covid-19
It has always been important to provide a hygienic workspace but after the impact of the pandemic, businesses are under even more scrutiny. When you make changes to your office to accommodate Covid-19 procedures, it can be daunting. You need to ensure that you follow all of the safety guidelines already in place, as well as ensuring you maintain social distance between all colleagues, provide safety equipment, and invest in stricter cleaning regimes. Luckily, there is plenty of support out there.
At this point, you should have a basic understanding of ways that you can make sure that your office building is safe for employees. If you make sure you have a safe layout with the latest fire protection equipment, safe access to washrooms, and as much lighting as you can, then you’re well on your way to having a safe, savvy workplace.
