Whether you’re an employer or an employee, when managing any workplace it’s important to take stock of the whole staff’s health and wellbeing. A stressed or sick member of staff is not going to produce their best work, and while many people feel pressured to keep their struggles to themselves, everybody benefits from ensuring their workplace community is feeling as well as can be. If you are an employer, try to ensure that your workplace fosters a sense of security and encouragement in your employees, so that if anyone is feeling under the weather, they can get back to being their best self and do their best for the job.
Conduct Risk Assessments
All UK employers are under a legal requirement to conduct risk assessments for any potential health and safety hazards in the workplace. In a hospitality environment, this can include providing PPE, like protective gloves from Unigloves, for use with cleaning chemicals or ensuring that spills are cleaned up quickly to minimise slips and falls; while in office environments this can include breaks from looking at computer screens or investing in ergonomic chairs and keyboards to minimise back and wrist strain. These risk assessments should be documented in a designated Health and Safety folder and precautions/solutions created to ensure everyone is safe in the event of a high risk activity. If an employee does injure themselves at work due to an unprecedented risk, they are within their legal right to claim compensation.
Talk To Your Employees
It may be nerve racking for your staff members to come forward in the event of an accident or mental health issue, even if this is not their fault and caused by outside circumstances. As an employer, it is your duty to acknowledge this and do your best to accommodate your employee, whether this be allowing medical leave for treatment or modifying their work environment to take this stressor away, be it a physical allergy or an anxiety trigger. Have regular one-to-one meetings with your employees to ensure they are doing as well as they can in their particular job.
Encourage Healthy Lifestyles
It’s easy to provide a relaxing space for your employees on their breaks, but it is also worth encouraging them to live healthy lifestyles, and look after each other. For example, ensuring your workplace is near to a green space can be very beneficial for employees to walk around on their lunch breaks and foster positive colleague relationships by sharing food. Likewise, workplace socials can contribute to a good community spirit in ensuring your team gets along, allowing them to get along as people as well as colleagues.
One thing that’s often overlooked is how clean your workspace is. Every once in a while it’s important that your office is deep cleaned, to ensure it is free of allergens such as mould which can wreck havoc on your staff’s health. It is wise to hire a cleaning company to come and do regular deep and professional cleans, whether once a week or once a month. Your staff’s health depends on it.
