If you’re managing a crew on a construction site, you have a major responsibility to everyone’s health and well-being. It’s the sort of responsibility that can leave you feeling nervous and overwhelmed. To help ease some of that strain, the following will explore a few things you should do to protect your crew on a construction site.
Follow The Regulations
No matter what is being constructed, there are going to be legally-imposed regulations you need to follow. Read through all these regulations carefully and bring up any points of confusion with the safety manager. It’s also a good idea to give these regulations to your crew so that they’re aware of the legal requirements. Once this is done, follow the regulations very strictly. If the regulations cannot be followed for some reason, stop work and get everyone away from the issue until it can be resolved.
Protective clothing training
While most people understand the importance of wearing protective clothing and gear while on a construction site, not everyone knows how to ensure that these items fit properly. If protective equipment doesn’t fit, its ability to provide protection is severely limited. Make sure to include in your training a discussion of how to properly wear appropriate protective gear. Have crew members put things on themselves and check that everything fits well and is secure.
Get The Right Insurance
All construction sites and all places of employment need insurance. Depending on where you live, there might be different options for insurance policies. Take the time to study each and choose the one that offers the greatest amount of protection to your crew. Figure out what is builders’ risk insurance and whether you need it. Figure out what worker’s compensation policy best suits you. You want to be fully covered should something happen so that your crew can get as much help as possible if they need it.
OpenCommunication
Make it clear that everyone on-site is allowed to speak up if they feel like something is unsafe or out of place. Beyond physical safety concerns, make it clear that everyone can speak up if they feel their mental or emotional well-being is at risk. When managing a crew employee well-being is vital. You want people to feel safe on all levels as calm people make better decisions and are more apt to notice anomalies. Beyond this, employee satisfaction can help you keep great crew members on staff.
Get To Know Everyone
Everyone on your crew is human, and this means they’re going to have good days and bad days. Bad days on a construction site can put everyone at risk, and this means if you know someone well enough to notice something is awry and pull someone aside and talk to them, you might just be saving lives. If someone is going through it, you can give them simpler tasks like office paperwork in the air-conditioned trailer. Often having someone notice their struggles and hear them out alone can drastically improve someone’s situation.
Study Every Incident Report
When an incident occurs, you need to study it and implement steps to prevent it from occurring again in the future. Even something small like a stapler that always pinches people needs to be taken care of. You don’t want your crew getting used to minor injuries or scrapes as this might desensitize them to greater problems in the future.
Conduct safety audits
It’s important to know that you won’t be able to have your eyes on everyone all the time. This means you need your crew to follow the safety regulations and properly wear the required protective gear even when you’re not looking. To ensure this is going on, conduct regular safety audits. Have someone tour the site and note when and where safety precautions are being ignored. Take immediate action to remedy these oversights.
Don’t Forget Digital Security
If your crew is going to be doing anything work-related on digital devices such as communicating about schedules or deliveries or logging the day’s work, you want to ensure that you have the right digital protections in place to keep their identities and data private. Businesses lost an estimated seven billion dollars last year to cybercrime with 86.2% of businesses experiencing a cyber attack. It’s not a matter of if you’re targeted and attacked; it’s a matter of when.
The above list should have given you a few ideas for how you can keep your crew safe. It’s important to note that safety isn’t something you tackle once and then don’t have to worry about. It involves daily vigilance and constant learning. The moment something poses a threat, it’s time to address that threat and reduce the risk of harm.
Comments are closed.