No matter where you work, electricity will be somewhere in your workplace. Sure, some jobs, such as engineers or electricians, encounter it a lot more, but even if you’re a humble office worker or an agrarian farmer, there’ll be some point in your working day where you’re face-to-face with a potential hazard.

Treatment for electric shock and its symptoms has come a long way, but as always, the best line of defence is using correct safety protocol. However, even if signs are used perfectly, the volatile nature of electricity can still result in accidents, so staff members must know the correct steps to deal with them.

Even the smallest shocks can have a long-term effect on health, so find out how electric shock notices and proper protocol saves lives below.

What Does the Law State?

Generally speaking, The Health and Safety Regulations 1996 place a responsibility on employers to provide safety signs in places and circumstances where there is risk to their employees. The level of risk is calculated during a risk assessment, so, in the case of electrical dangers, electric shock notices would need to be put in place to proactively protect employees.

A separate set of laws are specific to electrical dangers. These are principally defined by the Electricity at Work Regulations 1989 which puts responsibility on employers to ensure electrical devices are safe in the workplace. Employers, defined as the duty holders, must:

• Organise electrical systems in a way that prevents danger
• Keep electrical systems maintained and functioning safely
• Carry out repairs by a professional to prevent danger

However, once a risk assessment is carried out, how do you mitigate risk, react to accidents and what is the best practice for electrical-related signs in general?

How to Mitigate Risk

Other methods include:

• Checking to see if fuses are correctly fitted.
• Ensuring equipment at 230 volts or over has an RCD (residual current device) fitted order to limit the duration of electrical shocks.
• Consistently running maintenance to prevent and fix any problems with electrical equipment.

In addition to the above, you or another member of staff should be trained in how to deal with someone who has suffered from electric shock.

How to React Should an Electric Shock Occur

The first step to dealing with someone suffering from electric shock is to safely turn off the source of electricity. If this is not possible, then do not touch or go near the person until it is switched off.

Once the power has been switched off, prevent the injured person from becoming too cold. If they are unresponsive, then perform CPR if you are properly trained in it.

For burn areas, they should be covered by a sterile gauze bandage or cloth. Under no circumstances should a towel, blanket or other thick covering be used as the fibres can stick to the affected area.

The emergency services should be called if the person has any of the following electric shock symptoms:

• Confusion
• Arrhythmia
• Cardiac arrest
• Loss of consciousness
• Seizures
• Muscle pain and contractions
• Breathing difficulty

Of course, erring on the side of caution is recommended. If anybody is affected by electricity, then the emergency services or a trip to A&E can’t hurt. 

Electrical Sign Best Practice

A significant portion of electric-related injuries are down to, pardon the pun, shocking standards of signage. All possible electrical hazards must be signposted with appropriate signage.

Label Source stocks a range of electric shock notices to prevent the possibility of accidents and help to keep your premises safe.

Poor cable management leads to cables that aren’t only annoying to untangle and wrestle against, but are also a serious health and safety risk. Alongside the risk it poses to workplaces, there is a multitude of efficiency reasons as to why a proper cable management system pays dividends.

With half of the UK’s workforce placed in offices, cable management is essential to keep them working efficiently and, most importantly, safely. Plus, let’s face it, looking at tangled-up cables for too long can get anyone on edge!

How Can Cable Management Help Workplace Efficiency?

When you picture the ideal office workspace, what comes to mind? Images of things like a cushty back-supporting chair, plenty of legroom and adequate desk space comes to mind. One thing that doesn’t come to mind is a matrix of tangled cables beneath your feet. Even if these cables aren’t directly in your way, their presence is the antithesis of organised desk space.

If you do subscribe to an “out of sight, out of mind” philosophy when it comes to cable management, what happens when you need to move desks or the times where you need to replace parts of your computer set up? When replacing these or migrating desks, you will be lost in a mess of knots for longer than you need to be, leading to lost working time, damage to parts and, most of all, a lot of frustration.

For some workplaces, regular inspections are needed for cables and equipment. This is where having a tightly-organised cable management system comes into its own. When complemented by cable markers and cable tags, testing and differentiating different cables becomes easier.

Whenever clients walk through your workspace, you want to make a good impression. Having an untidy desk with knotted-up cables and cables doesn’t look the best, particularly if it’s part of a client’s first time meeting you or your business.

How Does Cable Management Save On Costs?

When cables are allowed to pile up or slack behind equipment, they tend to suffer from crushing and sagging. Over a long period of time, this damages the effectiveness of cables, meaning they will eventually need to be replaced.

Additionally, should maintenance be called, organising cables can bite into the time they spend fixing a problem. The longer they take to solve a problem, the more it will cost your business. Should maintenance need to spend 20% of its time finding the right cables and de-tangling knots, this will add up to a significant kitty of wasted cash.

The Health And Safety Risks Of Poorly-Managed Cables

Using incorrect cables, leaving electrical products on and relying on tangled-up cables is a big fire hazard. Daisy-chaining power strips – a practice where you connect one power strip to another – is worryingly a common practice in some workplaces, which is a serious fire hazard.

Instead of setting up proper cable management, this “easier” solution isn’t a solution at all, it just increases the probability of an outlet being overloaded with power, sparking and igniting a fire.

Slips, trips and falls make up 31% of non-fatal injuries at work according to the HSE. Tangled-up cables are rarely stored away properly, with trips over cables making up a significant portion of office-based work injuries. If an employee trips over a cable left out and you, as an employer, haven’t sorted it out, then you will be liable.

Overall, not operating under proper cable identification best practice and utilising a cable management system is the opposite of a safe, well-managed workspace.

Workplace Products Which Help

Organising cables is so easy that it’s a wonder why it isn’t as common as it should be. By utilising a few products, which you can find here at Label Source, it can be made significantly easier.

To safeguard your cables and operate under proper cable management, you can use the following:

• Safety cable wrap labels – Used to show if cables or appliances have been properly tested, complete with a date for when the next test is due.
• Wire markers – Identifies cables with a number or letter-based system.
• Cable identification labels – Marks and identifies labels with a colour-based system. Comes in diameters from 4mm – 16mm.
• Plastic cable tags – Identifies cables with high voltages or currents.

Establish A Cable Management System Today

In essence, a cable management system can improve workplace efficiency by saving on time during inspection and making repairs easier. Time is money, and nobody wants to spend time detangling a mess of cables on the clock.

For those of you reading who are currently drowning under a never-ending flood of cables, then consider the range of cable management products from Label Source.

For businesses that frequently interact with pedestrians, slip-resistant floor stickers are an excellent method of both improving floor grip and highlighting areas suitable for walking.

While these are not a health and safety requirement, they have advantages for people-facing businesses, especially when it comes to managing how people interact with your space. Below, we list how slip-resistant footprint stickers can give your business a safety boost, as well as provide you with ergonomic and creative benefits.

Uses for Slip-Resistant Footprint Stickers

Mostly, businesses use footprint stickers to control people traffic and ensure shoppers and/or pedestrians are on the correct path. For that reason, these stickers are popular in the following places:

• Shopping aisles
• Concert, conference and sporting venues
• Factories
• Warehouses
• Hospitals

Besides determining where people can and can’t go, footprint stickers can be used for advertising and brand awareness purposes. They allow businesses to flex their creativity while solving issues with foot and people traffic.

Benefits of Using Slip-Resistant Stickers

While they’re not a health and safety requirement, adding slip-resistant footprint stickers can have several benefits to a business. Namely:

• Improvements to the efficiency of people and foot traffic through the premises.
• Provides avenues for decoration, brand awareness and marketing.
• Reduces the probability of slips during wet weather.
• Prevents customers from entering prohibited areas.
• Improves customer experience.

Floor stickers exist in a space between improving a business’ customer experience and providing a layer of safety.

How to Apply Floor Stickers

Application of floor stickers is simple enough. Firstly, ensure the sticker will be added to a secure floor that is clean and dry. The stickers are resistant to chemicals and cleaning materials, but applying them to a dirty floor will affect their usefulness.

Next, plan out where you want to put the stickers so they are roughly in line with a person’s stride. Placing small markers can help with this. Finally, just peel the stickers and place them on the floor evenly – voila, you’re done!

Solve Your People Traffic Problems 

To upgrade your business and help solve people traffic problems, browse our range of slip-resistant footprint stickers at Label Source.

On average, British people are less likely to recycling in the workplace than at home. With the majority of us happily recycling in the comforts of our own domestic bliss, these efforts tend to go out of the window once we clock-in.

There is a multitude of reasons as to why recycling in the workplace is more difficult than in a domestic setting, but businesses can make small changes to temper this tendency.

Encouraging recycling at work can be made easy by following best practice or proper use of recycling bags. Here, we explain how to improve recycling in the workplace.

Stock Up on Recycling Bags

As a business, you need to ensure your staff members have the resources required to recycle. A plentiful stock of recycling bags means you can be prepared for days when more people are on-site and when more waste is being produced than usual.

Not having the supplies to help your staff recycle can leave them demotivated and send strong signals that you, as a business, do not care about the issue enough.

Recycling bags should be of high quality, too. A strong, heavy-duty woven polypropylene make-up is recommended for the bags due to its durability. Label Source exclusively stocks these thanks to their usefulness in a wide array of industries.

Strategically Place Recycling Bins

In order to action recycling procedures in the workplace, you need to place bins strategically to proactively facilitate recycling. You want the act of putting waste in the correct bins to be almost subconscious for your staff, so putting the paper recycling bin near the printer or the food waste recycling bin in the kitchen can naturally increase recycling rates.

Placing a recycling bin next to all rubbish bins helps, too. We understand that all workplaces are busy and staff members do not want to spend much time thinking about the act of recycling. If you think about the placement of recycling bins, then this will naturally encourage recycling at work. 

Removing individual bins from under desks and workspaces is encouraging, too. If a staff member has a personal bin near their workstation, then they’re much more likely to put rubbish away there than at designated recycling points.

Educate and Communicate with Staff

Stocking up on recycling bags and bins isn’t going to improve your workplace’s recycling immediately. Your staff members need to be communicated with and educated, especially when it comes to using the correct recycling bins and cutting down on ‘wishcycling’.

‘Wishcycling’ is what happens when someone is unsure if a piece of waste is recyclable and/or which bin it goes in. Instead, they opt to recycle it in a random receptacle, but this causes problems later down the line. Educating staff on the long-term effects of ‘wishcycling’, and what each bin is used for, will not only increase the rate of recycling, but also its efficiency.

Recycling information can be cascaded at team meetings, delivered through internal emails, and via posters around the workplace. It’s also important to let all of your staff know why the company is attempting to increase rates of recycling and connect them with a sense of shared responsibility.  

Conduct a Full Waste Review

An annual waste review ensures your business is continually improving its recycling and not stagnating. The review compromises of two stages:

• A preliminary waste review – identification of the main waste produced and the costs of disposal.
• A detailed waste review – the plan to manage a business’ waste.

These reviews will inform your ongoing strategy and set up a long-term plan to improve recycling in the workplace.

Are You Eco-Conscious?

Having signs such as recycling signs, waste segregation signage and resource conservation signs and notices are recommended to get you up to standard.

However, if you’re truly looking to improve your workplace’s recycling potential, then check out the range of high-quality recycling bags from Label Source. These bags are the first step in ensuring you and your staff members are ready to face the modern challenges of an eco-friendly workplace.

Despite only forming 1.8% of Britain’s workforce, agriculture accounts for 19% of in-work fatal injuries. From injuries with machinery and falls from height to lifting mishaps and hazardous substances, agriculture is filled with hazards for both workers and those passing through farmland.  In addition to injuries and direct threats to life, the rate of illness is significantly higher in agriculture than other industries.

As such, it is of utmost importance that farmland, machinery and areas where cattle are being held is properly signposted. Below, we list the essential farm safety signs required to keep an agricultural business running well.

What Needs to Be Signposted?

Farms are full of hazards, but breaking down what needs to be signposted can make things a lot easier. Namely, an agricultural business must signpost:

• Areas of cattle. For example, “Beware of the Bull” for pastures that have a bull in them or “Sheep grazing” for sheep.
• Cattle grids, especially those near public footpaths.
• Areas with high volumes of chemical spraying. For example, pesticides or warehouses where cattle are cleaned.
• Areas with rural pursuits, such as shooting.
• Common pathways for tractors.
• Public footpaths and private property.
• Farm equipment. For example, crop dusters. Automatic machinery is an especially dangerous facet of farming, so these need separate signs.
• Miscellaneous hazards. For example, agrochemicals, dust hazards and barbed wire.

Overall, paying due diligence and signposting everything is essential to both keeping agricultural workers and members of the public safe, and to pass HSE scrutiny.

The Most Common Farm Safety Signs in the UK

The most common agriculture signs and symbols in the UK have to do with cattle, bulls, sheep and horses. Associated with this is the “Caution Cattle grid” sign which will be a common site for those living in rural areas. 

Other common signs will be to do with farm management such as warning signs for electric fences, warnings for machinery, public footpath signs and signs signalling the beginning of private property.

What Does the HSE and Law Say?

The Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 (HSWA) and the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 places responsibility on all companies and individuals to ensure provision is made for health and safety at work.

This includes agricultural industries who must, as far as is reasonably practicable, care for the health, safety and long-term welfare of employees and those who can be affected.

The HSE expects farms to have their own safety policy specific to themselves, organise workers, and set standards. According to the HSE, internal safety policy should be:

• Bespoke to the farm
• State general aims for employee health
• Accept responsibility for the safety of those your farm affects
• Outline the responsibilities of specific members of staff
• Describe systems and procedures
• Ensure there are enough resources in place to achieve this plan.

To partner this internal policy, farms must carry out risk assessments. A risk assessment is made up of five distinct parts:

• Identify hazards. A hazard is anything that can cause harm, but you also need to consider the risk associated with this hazard.
• Consider who is most at risk and who may be harmed.
• Evaluate risk and put in place precautions. If you can, get rid of the hazard, but this isn’t always possible, you need to put precautions in place should someone be harmed by it.
• Put learnings into practice.
• Ensure controls stay consistent and review the risk assessment continually.

Interested in Farm Safety Signs?

If you are interested farm safety signs and agricultural essentials such as equine safety signs, then browse our range here at Label Source.