Continued Diligence in Safety
By: Evan Lucyk
As the pandemic rolls on, our global adaptability has proven strong. While eagerness for the world to go back to pre-COVID times has been building, we must continue to prioritize public and business safety. With fluctuating numbers and cases, there are different things to pay attention to all the time and changes to make within businesses for the safety of employees, customers, and family members. At Bit Service, we have been closely monitoring our COVID safety protocols and were inspired to take the opportunity to also dive deep into our general safety protocols. We worked to build documentation to ensure continued safety and comfort for our staff. Today we will look at continued diligence and safety and how the pandemic issues have increased due diligence maintenance to avoid complacency.
We have all been prioritizing safety measures to prevent the pandemic from spreading, and at Bit Service, we noticed some of our other safety protocols becoming more relaxed. While we had not gotten too light on these policies, we noticed that at times they bordered on complacency as the pandemic dragged on. We took this as a sign we needed to survey our own established policies and began to review what kind of employee training we have for certain scenarios so that we have leaders prepared for emergency different safety protocols and can ensure our teams’ safety.
Reviewing our staff’s levels of training has been particularly useful for us. By building a database of when each individual requires re-certification, we can work together with our team to consistently ensure everyone is up to date. This keeps our workplace certified with an adequate number of staff members having first aid, forklift, fall arrest, crane safety, and more. This also gives us the foresight to sign our employees up for re-certification courses before they’ve expired. Suppose your office manager or human resources department have some additional time. In that case, you can consider recruiting them to help with creating a spreadsheet or database like this for your own workplace.
By surveying our staff, we discovered that a few employees had different kinds of personal protective equipment (PPE). Replacing PPE levels that are not COVID mandated, such as safety glasses and steel-toed shoes, can significantly affect your employees’ day-to-day experience. Working through worn and scratched protective glasses significantly hinders workers’ sight and safety and can often be overlooked. Something as simple as providing new steel-toed shoes to improve comfort, safety, and ease of work can make a world of difference in overall happiness in the workplace.
Bit Service is happy to provide diligence and safety for all our workers, not just for those working around heavy machinery. We respect that some of our staff may be more comfortable than others being back in a physical work environment during the pandemic. Checking in often about how our staff members feel and accepting suggestions to improve COVID protocols continuously, we can ensure people are going home feeling safe and keeping their circles safe.