~by Kara Masterson~.
Safety regulators are becoming increasingly strict when it comes to the safety at plants and warehouses all over the world. One of the best ways to ensure you are not in violation is to stay ahead of the game.
Here are some ways to make sure your production facility is meeting all of its safety requirements.
Do Your Homework
Research is huge when it comes to making sure you are in compliance with safety regulations. Make it a weekly task to go through news and other articles concerning safety at production facilities. Get yourself some journals that might describe new regulations that are coming out in the future. There are also several web sites that offer to keep you informed if you subscribe. Getting your research done and knowing about these regulations is the first line of defense when it comes to compliance.
Train Your Employees
Keeping your employees informed, from the CEO down to teams on the production floor, is another great way to make sure you are in compliance with regulations. Hold monthly update meetings with your production managers to keep them informed. Hold annual or bi-annual meetings with all of your employees to make sure they know all about the current regulations and what they can do to help keep your plant up to code. Make sure that everyone knows when a new regulation comes out by using interoffice or plant-wide emails. Your employees need to stay informed.
Keep Your Equipment Up To Date
Faulty or old equipment is one of the easiest ways to drop out of compliance when it comes to safety. Make sure that you are using safe, working equipment and that there are no hazards which employees could encounter while using it. If you are in one of the many industries, such as food and beverage, that have a need to protect processing equipment, you may want to look into the different uses for side inlet strainers for fine particle filtration. This will keep you in compliance, your customers happy, and your company in business.
Give Employees Ownership
A great way to get employees involved and informed is to create a safety compliance team. This team can be comprised of all sorts of different employees from both the offices and from the production floor. Give these employees extra training in the regulations of your industry and let them do their own research. Then have discussions about what the plant can do to become more compliant. Giving your employees ownership over something like this is a great way to foster engagement. And it will ensure that your compliance officers and your front line employees are staying one step ahead of the regulators to keep your facility safe.
Safety should be your number one goal when it comes to the regulatory environment around your industry. Companies are being shut down every day because they do not keep their equipment in safe working order and they do not keep their employees informed. You can change this by doing these four things.
Meet the Author: Kara Masterson
Kara Masterson is a freelance writer from West Jordan, Utah. She graduated from the University of Utah and enjoys writing and spending time with her dog, Max.
