what are the health and safety responsibilities of an employer?

Your company’s greatest asset isn’t technology or capital. It’s the people who walk through your doors everyday, cultivate the roots of your culture and assemble your identity. While you focus on the bottom line and business calculus, health and safety of your workforce is no less important.

Above all else, the bedrock of a thriving business enterprise is the health and safety of its people. This means, as a modern employer, your responsibilities are twofold. You must shore up defenses against on-site physical and psychological hazards and foster a culture where people want to stay.

Today, upholding that promise means steering your workplace strategy to a degree which shatters every existing blueprint. On an entirely different plane of existence sits the culture of safety, woven into the very fabric of your operational resilience.

The bottom line is, your talent strategy must embrace a holistic duty of care that nurture a physically and psychologically sound workplace. This article discusses these priorities at length and offers you a safety playbook to foster a dynamic ecosystem of talent.

the compliance outline of health and safety.

Think of safety compliance as a most the most practical set of guidelines to embed safety into your org-DNA. This mandate for a secure workplace draws a line in the sand to define the baseline workplace safety standards.

For instance, regulatory bodies like OSHA in the U.S. offer you a blueprint of a verifiably safe workplace. As a direct outcome, you equip your operational and HR heads to become diligent risk assessors, who keep an eye out for potential workplace hazards.

Furthermore, to ensure transparency, write down the terms of this safety contract. Fundamentally, you promote safety documentation as the best practice across departments. What logically follows is a highly-informed workplace with key actors driving the drill of physical and emotional wellbeing of your workforce.

Notably, your leadership will ultimately address not just potential physical safety compromises, but also the subtle, corrosive psychological dangers internally. Hence, a formal health and safety program features the action agenda that accentuates a proactive health and safety framework for your organization. And, regulatory bodies aid this path for you with a diverse set of tools and resources.

physical health and safety for operational talent.

A genuinely safe operational workforce is one which has access to a well-stocked workbook for proactive injury prevention. When the moving parts of your shopfloor or warehousing hub are your workers, establishing a system that educates and safeguards your operational talent is non-negotiable, to say the least.

Additionally, a safety-first culture is founded the list of the most common culprits of compromised workplace safety. Staying nimble to identify, assess and stamp out physical risks inherent to your operational environment underscores your commitment to worker safety.

High-quality safety gear and equipment follow suit in your health and safety responsibility list. While safety gear is a worker’s personal armor, well-maintained PPE such as hard hats and safety harnesses are the shield between your workforce and an injury.

Additionally, active hazard management is a mindset, not a rulebook. Although workplace communication has its part to play in instilling safe behaviors, highly-reviewed training modules add a diversely strong layer to worker safety. How?

Safety training facilitates defense drills to a myriad of possible workplace hazards. Moreover, worker cohorts that come out of a safety drill tend to be more confident about carrying out their daily activities. Safety training prepares your workforce to move with awareness around complex machinery and unguarded walkways, issuing effective controls across teams.

psychological wellbeing for professional talent.

When it comes to professional talent, wellbeing keeps company with workplace positivity and alleviation of verbal and non-verbal toxicity. As a sample, consider a professional debate turning into a fuming battleground of divergent thoughts. Or a consistent negative behavioral pattern misunderstood as a casual workplace prank.

Such derogatory models of remarks, dialogues or view points often signal at a more serious root cause of workplace toxicity. One that’s often brushed under the rug. However, this very secret can poison the well in the blink of an eye.

This corrosive blueprint is a call for concern; and requires your leadership teams to actively pursue control measures to center your workplace’s balance and re-establish harmony. Workplace positivity is not an emotional state of mind. It’s a habit. A positive workplace is stitched together by little acts of courtesy, that go far past several one-off wellbeing symbols.

A critical component that engines it is a well-laid communication pipeline not only from the top, but throughout your cross-functional hierarchy. Additionally, a solid communication plan serves the purpose beyond top-down directives. It helps your HR teams to shine a spotlight on positive behavioral patterns, celebrate wins and back your teams’ emotional resilience.

how can you put this into practice? 

Putting together a year-long employee engagement strategy is your first step. Furthermore, lay out a cadence of employee townhalls that bring together top voices from your leadership and highlight how much every member of the workforce means to them. Moreover, when you tie your business vision with a reward for best practices and behaviors, you’ve left no stone unturned while instilling emotional health and safety.

Ultimately, this architectural endeavor is to strengthen productivity and retention. Besides considering physical interactions as anchor points for employee bonding; solidify remotion communication. Your remote teams will thank you. When you champion work-life balance, you’ll nurture a culture worth its weight in gold.

start a conversation with randstad now.

Fostering a thriving workplace ecosystem while ensuring health and safety is a tall order. All the more, when the success of your talent strategy hinges on your retention numbers. A physically and psychologically safe workplace is productive, ambitious and welcoming. Start a chat with Randstad’s expert team to device a talent strategy tailored to your health and safety needs.