As an employer in Australia, you should know that you have a legal obligation, under the current Workplace Health and Safety Act, to ensure the health and safety of yourself, your staff, your customers and even visitors.
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This guide will help you, recognise the workplace hazards that can be found in your business facility, to assess the risks to health and safety, and if necessary, to eliminate them, or decrease them to an adequate level.
Workplace hazards include not just physical objects but also the handling and environment itself. Therefore, this guide will demonstrate an extensive list of areas that all business owners and managers should take into account when managing a cleaning plan.
The most prominent causes of injury in serious injury claims were;
Alphaclean has created this guide about slips, trips and falls for your convenience so that you can protect your staff and clients from fall accidents.
When an occupation risk is identified, the following options can help to deal with it:
When you choose from the above options, you always need to set deadlines after which you re-evaluate the risk and assess if the preferred method is working on reducing the risk.
Business owners and facility managers can contribute to cleaning staff daily tasks only if they are aware of the significant hazards.
For the general cleaner, there are at least five major risks in their daily work that can cause injury:
Business can always take steps to redesign for the less hazardous environment. Some examples of the redesign include:
Electrical equipment is used most widely in the cleaning industry.
Skin penetrating injuries can occur if staff are handling incorrectly. :
Appropriate equipment for handling and disposal of sharps help staff to handle sharps that can be found in rubbish:
Staff should also never hold garbage bags near to their body and compress rubbish bags.
Substances are usually the cleaning chemicals
It is critical to manage the location of incompatible goods, as certain goods cannot be placed near chemicals. The government has provided a segregation tool to ensure there is adequate help for business and citizens in the transportation and safekeeping of dangerous goods.
Exposures include:
Not everyone reacts to heat the same way. Heat stress caused by workplace hazards can finally cause dehydration, heat rash, dizziness, fainting and heat stroke can possibly lead to death.
Commercial cleaning equipment providers can consult on the accepted length of usage periods, how to handle machines, how to identify errors and other equipment management best practices.
What should be included in the training of cleaning staff?
The training should include fundamentals enclosed in the Code of Practice – Manual tasks such as:
Rotations and changes of staff should always be managed accordingly with no exceptions made when it comes to training. Sometimes staff should be provided different training in a different environment with varying levels of risk and management availability.
Summary
Occupational Health and Safety is a critical priority for employer and must be managed daily. Often, the right choice of equipment and cleaning tools can make the work environment a much cleaner & safer place for everybody including the visitors. Also see Wikipedia definition.
In this guide, Alphaclean wanted to give the best advice for managing health and safety of your team and be a responsible employer that attracts the best talent and beats competition at all levels.
When developing a strategic cleaning plan, ensure that all the tools and equipment will only contribute to long-term safety & the ultimate cleaning result.