No matter how big or small your business is, ensuring the collective health and safety of your staff is crucial. Workplace injuries can lead to increasing costs, loss of revenue, and impact your personnel. Practising workplace health & safety (HSW) guidelines is a sensible way to boost employee morale and protect your business. Maintaining safe standards and implementing protocols go a long way in improving your business and affecting your employee productivity.
Benefits of having a work health and safety checklist
Whether your checklist is paper based or digital, having one ensures that you are on top of your obligations and create a safe workplace for your employees. Regulatory bodies in New Zealand set strict guidelines for workplace safety. Using a health and safety checklist means that you will comply with the regulations and avoid potential penalties. Checklists also enable to assign accountability of safety to one person. It allows the team to know who is in charge of the audit/inspection and creates a smooth flow of processes.
Digital checklists are more convenient to use and you can store all your reports in one place. It also automatically generates reports which saves time.
Ways to create a HSW culture
Your duties as an employer include looking after the health and well-being of your employees. There are several ways to achieve a HSW culture:
- Conduct training sessions to share information about workplace health & safety guidelines with employees
- Record health & safety training provided to staff
- Consult with in-house or external trainers for maintaining safety standards and protocols
- If employees are working from home, then ensure their home is safe space to do so
- Create a workplace health & safety checklist for employees
Things to include in a health and safety checklist
A health and safety checklist will include certain key components such as training, supervision, equipment, facilities, and worker involvement. These broad areas will include things like :
- Training workers on specific hazards and risks related to their work
- Supervision for new or inexperienced workers
- Identify and assess all workplace hazards
- Develop and implement an incident and emergency response plan
- Maintain a clean, healthy, safe, and well-maintained workplace
- Industry specific concerns
Penalties for non-compliance
Non-compliance with health and safety regulations can be very costly for businesses. Employees have the right to refuse to work if they have reasonable grounds to believe that the work is unsafe. Penalties for non-compliance with health and safety regulations may depend on the breach and the impact on worker safety. It can be in the form of fines, imprisonment, or both.
Keep up with your HSW duties
Peninsula has worked with thousands of businesses, supporting them with tailored HR and HSW advice and resources. We have checklists, guides, blogs, and materials for businesses to understand their health and safety obligations. Call us on 0800215025 to learn about how we can help you.