Top Worksite Hazards and How To Prevent Them

Worksite safety should be considered paramount. It’s not only about the safety of your employees, but also about complying with Australian workplace rules and regulations. As an employer, it’s your duty to protect the health, safety and welfare of each employee working in your business.

While it’s your duty to consider the safety of employees, sufficient training has to be given to everyone so that employees can protect themselves during any accident or emergency. Creating a safety barrier around your worksite can be considered the first step in protecting the workforce, along with other safety measures.

To enable this, you must provide information about the hazards that commonly occur in a worksite and how to avoid them through precautionary steps. This blog will outline the hazards and practical steps that employees can take to minimise the damage and to meet compliance obligations. It’s everyone’s duty to protect the workforce and their organisation.

Common Worksite Hazards

1. Falling incidents like slips and trips

Falling accidents might be the most common workplace hazards that you can expect. While it may sound less dangerous, some falls could be fatal, costing the lives of employees or ending up with grave injuries. Most accidents are caused due to wet floors, uneven surfaces, poor lighting, obstructed walkways and lack of adequate warning signage.

You can easily prevent most accidents by keeping the floors dry and clean always. Using non-slip mats, placing warning boards wherever possible, fixing uneven flooring and adding proper lighting are some of the safety measures you can take to avoid trips and falls.

2. Fire breakouts

Fire breakouts may happen rarely; however, they can cost your business and the lives of your employees and cause irreversible loss. It’s important to conduct inspections of your wiring so that you don’t get any sparks while operating machinery. Poor maintenance and improper audits will lead to unexpected fire breakouts that can have a huge negative impact on your business.

Employers also need to be trained about fire assessment when the building layout changes and conduct regular surveys to know about any issues in the circuit.

3. Electric hazards

Some of the common workplace hazards related to electrical safety are shocks, burns, fires, and fatalities. Just like fire safety, you have to conduct regular inspections and surveys to ensure that all the electrical appliances are working in a safe mode. Employees who deal with electrical appliances daily should be trained on how to manage any problem proactively so that any electrical mishap is easily avoided.

4. Contact with chemicals

Chemicals are not only the substances you work with but also consist of cleaning agents, biological agents and airborne particles like wood dust, flour and silica. If not properly filtered through vents, they can cause serious harm to the respiratory system.

Employees have to identify the risks and ensure that to control the dust emitted so that it won’t cause any harm to their bodies. Health surveillance should be accessible to all employees so that everyone can know the status of their lung health from time to time.

5. Machinery breakouts

While machinery breakouts are common, they can be easily avoided with proper maintenance of machines. This includes regular inspections, oiling, and repairing issues when they are at an early stage. Proper training is necessary for each employee to safeguard the machines.

You can use a safety barrier and allow only authorised and trained professionals to access heavy machinery to ensure there won’t be any errors that can cause huge damage.

6. Environmental conditions

Environmental conditions like exposure to extreme hot and cool temperatures, poor air quality, improper lighting, and excessive noise can cause undesirable situations. All these common workplace accidents and preventing them will help you preserve your profits and invest in more advanced equipment that can tolerate any kind of environmental change.

You can prevent some of the accidents by installing proper ventilators, noise indicators, alarm systems, warning signals, bright lighting, smoke detectors, and many more. Weather changes should be communicated to all employees so that they can operate the machinery according to the temperature.

7. Ergonomic risks

Ergonomic risks include issues like musculoskeletal disorders, including back pain, joint pains, poor posture, strain injuries, and upper limb disorders. These problems arise due to repetitive lifting of heavy equipment and awkward positioning while sitting and standing.

As an employer, you can ease these issues by providing height-adjustable chairs, monitor stands, footrests, and ergonomic accessories. Usage of trolleys should be encouraged in logistics to prevent heavy lifting.

Final thoughts

In addition to these issues, employees should be able to manage stress levels created at the worksite. Otherwise, it can impact their mental health, leading to situations like panic attacks on the worksite. Regular appraisals and one-on-one meetings with kind conversations can be a step forward for a healthy worksite. Following compliance rules and regulations will mostly prevent workplace accidents and help you gain more productivity.