Thoughts like ‘who qualifies for Medicare’ or ‘what is the best health insurance’ probably never crossed your mind, and even if they did, it was just for a second. The truth is that thinking about health insurance is important, even if you are as fit as a fiddle. You never know what could happen and when you will need it.
If you are a person with your own business, you are not an exception when it comes to health insurance. Furthermore, your case is even more complicated as you need to not only stay insurance compliant by yourself but you also need to make sure that your workers do it too. But how can you do that?
Well, keep reading if you want to find out.
Keep The Place Tidy And Clean – Highlight and Remove Hazards
Make keeping the whole building clean your priority. Make sure that it’s up to health code, especially since if places like the kitchen and the bathroom will not be clean well, they can cause sickness. It’s very easy to catch a bacterial infection through shared items such as door handles and phones, and that’s why you should always have a supply of antibacterial wipes, tissues, hand sanitizers, and soap.
If there is a dead animal somewhere in your building, for example, a rat in the air shaft, the odor caused by it can not only cause sickness, but it also makes the place hard and uncomfortable to work in.
Falls and collisions cause the most injuries in the workplace. However, by knowing what hazards there are that could potentially harm your employees and clients, can help you in keeping the workspace welcoming and safe. So answer yourself this question – What dangers are present in your workplace?
Have Effective Heating And Ventilation
Even though there are no minimum and maximum temperatures and humidity levels that have to be in a workplace established by OSHA, some states have their own regulations regarding this matter. That’s why you must know the law. And besides, having the right temperature is an essential component in a functional workspace. Nobody likes to work when it’s freezing cold or extremely hot.
Some of the things that you should take into consideration include:
- depending on the nature of the job, the needed temperatures might vary
- usually, the right temperature in the workplace falls between 68 and 76 degrees, while humidity is in a range of 20 to 60 percent
- make sure that you have a smoking policy in the workplace and that employees know about it and follow it, as sometimes they might try to hold you liable for health issues they developed because of other people smoking
Have The Right Safety Equipment
You need to be prepared for anything that could happen in your workplace. For instance:
- A fully equipped First-Aid Kit is a must-have in any workplace. It should include things like band-aids of different sizes, disposable gloves, medical tape, etc. Remember that medications and medical items that are not used need to be replaced every once in a while, as, for example, band-aids can lose their stickiness or creams can expire.
- Make sure that all of the fire extinguishers are not expired – they also need to be checked regularly by professionals. Your employees should know how to use them. They also should know how to behave if there was a fire in the building. Just in case of an emergency, you also should have fire blankets stored somewhere.
- Make sure that smoke alarms, fire alarms, etc. are always working correctly. Just in case, you should keep backup batteries for them.
- Equipe yourself and your employees with items like brooms, vacuums or mops – things that will be useful if someone spilled water, or if there are pieces of broken glass on the floor.
To keep your office safe, you need to make sure that your employees know from where they can get each of these things. You should also introduce a policy where if some of these supplies reach a certain level, the employees should notify you so that you can be sure they will be there if you need them. If you already have this policy – that’s great.
Provide Safety Skills And Understanding
Make sure that you have at least one person who specializes in the first aid. If you don’t, you can always take a course yourself or pay for one or more employees to do it. Also, each one of the employees has to participate in making your workplace a safe environment.
Print out the safety code and put it in a place where it will be visible and easy to access for everyone. Make sure that all of your employees know that they need to comply with it. Additionally, consider investing in osha 10 online training to make sure the safety standards are always met.
Store Dangerous Materials Properly
Make sure that all of the things that could be dangerous are correctly stored – it includes chemicals, as well as things that are sharp, flammable, poisonous, etc.
Some of the items might need to be labeled and kept locked somewhere, with instructions on how to use them.
Have An Emergency Plan And Conduct Regular Drills
You always need to have an emergency plan for whatever could happen in your workplace. Write it down, and review it regularly so that it will always be up to date. Make sure that all of your employees know it, and that it is visible and accessible to them. Every time a new person is hired or an employee transfers to a different location, the safety plan should be presented to them.
The hard truth is that unfortunately, most workplaces don’t have safety plans, and when an emergency happens, they don’t know what to do. They start to panic, which is never a good idea. So to avoid this kind of situation, always be prepared.
Conclusion
There are many ways in which you can stay insurance compliant, and the ones listed above are just a few of them. In the beginning, it might look like a lot, but it’s actually not that hard to follow them. All you have to do is try. And train your employees of course. Good Luck.
