Best Practices 15 & 16

A clean, safe, stable work environment is often taken for granted by management, because that’s how they want their business run. The fact is that those attributes are benefits provided to employees. Are your employees aware of the intrinsic benefits provided to them? Are team-building activities and training a regular part of your operation? These are benefits that may not be available elsewhere.

Consider the reasons that customers patronize your business – those same reasons often apply equally to employees. 

Consider the possibility of flexible hours. Many employers are finding that flexibility is a powerful recruitment and retention tool – and, one that can be a no-cost productivity enhancement.

A formal, written safety policy establishes that the company is concerned for the well-being of its employees. That single factor has a ripple effect throughout the business, importantly enhancing both the quality of employees’ work and their productivity.

Assure that your safety policy focuses attention on the employee selection, hiring and orientation processes, because hiring people with the requisite skills and attitude is often a huge step toward better safety results in itself. 

Establish a safety training calendar that regiments your scheduling and facilitation of safety training, because safety training is often put off in deference to the “fires of the day”.

 

Finally, your policy should establish penalties for breaches in safety processes and procedures. Those penalties should be at least as severe as the penalties assessed in any other area of the operation.