Health and safety in the workplace is often thought of as a regulation, a box to tick, a boring bit of training to get through. Not for us, we take health and safety seriously because we know how important it is to ensure our products are the best they can be, and that our expert staff continue to work for us. We want to make sure that our staff are in a safe working environment and that we have done everything that we can to stop injuries before they happen. Ultimately, we believe that good health and safety benefits our staff and the business by ensuring high product quality.
What does workplace health and safety mean?
Health and safety broadly refers to the regulations, procedures, and practices designed to prevent accidents, injuries or illnesses in a workplace. Health and safety are important in a workplace because it helps identify hazards, assess risks, and support the implementation of control measures to protect physical and mental well-being.
It isn’t just a one-way system; it’s a give-and-take relationship. There are responsibilities on both sides, as employees have a duty to take care of themselves and others, while the employers hold the primary responsibility for maintaining a safe working environment. At its core, health and safety is just that: it’s all the ways that everyone who works together ensures what they do keeps themselves and others healthy and safe, not just in that moment, but for the years to come.
Why does health and safety matter in manufacturing?
Accidents can happen quickly and unexpectedly; the job of health and safety protocols is to prevent them from happening and teach people how best to respond if they do happen. In manufacturing, people are working with potentially dangerous tools and machinery, hazardous chemicals and many moving parts. The potential for an accident is high.
Good health and safety protocols can be the difference between life and death. Both reducing the likelihood of an accident and knowing how to help someone if they are injured can save lives and prevent serious, life-changing injuries.
“Health and safety should be the first thing you think about as a manufacturer. If you can’t keep people safe, you shouldn’t be manufacturing anything.”
As an employer or manager, it’s your responsibility to ensure that everyone is following basic safety rules, even if they seem small. A box left in a walkway, or a bit of wire dangling down where it shouldn’t be, might seem insignificant, but it can cause serious accidents. This includes ensuring that staff have the proper training and risk awareness so they can follow these procedures effectively every day. Effective Health and safety training helps staff develop a sense of confidence and control; when they know how to handle risks and respond in an emergency, they can act effectively.
Brucom's thorough safety procedures
“our manufacturing processes are strong, disciplined quality control, and our integrated management systems are aligned with ISO 9001, ISO 14001, and ISO 45001. A recent high grade in a client audit reinforces our ongoing commitments to continuous improvement across quality, environmental responsibility, and health and safety.”
Jade helps to keep our staff safe by doing regular risk assessments to determine if anything is unsafe and needs to be amended. She is also responsible for embedding our effective reporting processes. Our staff talk to Jade if they spot a hazard or see something that needs to be fixed before someone gets injured. Jade then ensures the risks are actioned to avoid an injury before they happen. Thanks to these processes and our staff’s diligent reporting, we have never had a serious injury in over 20 years of operation.
How our health and safety measures help to protect long-term wellbeing: the case of RSI
By having good hygiene standards, safe environments, and embedding positive habits into the ways we work, we can reduce the spread of illness, supporting everyone’s overall wellbeing both physically and mentally. Thinking about long-term health and well-being is just as important as reducing accidents.
In manufacturing, repetitive movements can cause long-term health issues such as Repetitive Strain Injury (RSI). This issue can seriously impact someone’s life by causing chronic pain and limiting their movement, and sometimes forcing them out of work. At Brucom, we effectively eliminated RSI from our workforce by investing in the proper tools and machinery, which reduced excessive repetitive movement.
Fundamentally, health and safety are about being responsible towards others. Your actions and decisions, as a member of staff, a manager or a director, don't just affect you; they will affect those around you. That’s why health and safety are considerations in all decisions at Brucom and at all levels of the business.
How does good health and safety relate to high-quality products?
If staff feel safe at work, they perform better. Our staff feel secure as they know how to safely and effectively use the tools and machinery required to craft products. Our staff can perform complex skills with confidence as they have been trained to stay safe and to speak up if there is something wrong.
If management invests in the proper tools and machines, like using automation where it benefits workers, it means that they can use their time more effectively. Our staff use the same attention to detail that they use in assessing risk to assess products for quality. They use their time to check each product is perfect before it gets sent to the next part of production.
Clients can feel confident that we follow procedures and processes carefully and show attention to detail in everything we do, from the safety of our staff to the soldering on our products.
Why is it important?
Within manufacturing, it is important to follow the correct health and safety procedures. By consistently improving our machinery, enforcing PPE standards, and ensuring effective reporting and communication with our compliance manager, we protect our staff and ensure all processes are conducted with the care and attention required for high-quality products.
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