As an employer, it is your duty to ensure that employees receive immediate care, if they are involved in an accident or fall ill at work. The Health and Safety (First Aid) Regulations 1981 state that employers should provide adequate tools and knowledge in the workplace, for an efficient response in the case of an employee illness or injury. This includes having first aid equipment which suits the risks of your working environment, and having enough staff who are first aid trained, in order to cope in a medical emergency. For businesses who deal directly with members of the public, this requirement is also extended to their needs, should complications from an illness or accident occur.
In order to provide the best level of protection, you should consider a number of factors, from the size of your organisation and working conditions, to the individual needs of your staff members. You should also ensure that these measures are properly highlighted to staff and other members of the public, in order to ensure that they are easily accessible in the event of an emergency.
Here are some essential first aid signs, warnings and instructions that should be displayed in your workplace:
First Aid Box
A first aid box is a basic requirement for any workplace, and should be easily spotted and located by anyone who needs it.
Defibrillator Safety Sign
Defibrillators are becoming more and more common in workplaces, particularly at organisations with public access or with particularly heightened risks. These pieces of medical equipment can provide life-saving attention when used by trained members of staff, and should be properly displayed for rapid attention to the medical emergency in question.
First Aiders List
This sign allows those with first aid training to be identified quickly in the case of a medical emergency, which is particularly useful for larger organisations.
For more medical safety and information signs, click here!
If you have a requirement for waterproof labels and plan to print your own labels using a laser printer, then Label Source has an extensive range of suitable products. Our polyester A4 sheets (size 297mm x 210mm) are available in a wide range of label sizes (from 5mm x 15mm to 297mm x 210mm) in our most popular colour of white. Also, other colours of polyester are supplied, such as yellow, clear, and silver. They are 58 micron thick, with a receptive top coat to facilitate good print quality from laser printer toner, and a clear acrylic permanent bond adhesive.
So if your requirement is to mark an item which may be stored outside, open to the elements, or that may be used indoors, where there is a possibility of coming into contact with moisture, these could be the items that meet your needs.
For further information on our range, please click the following links; white; yellow; clear; silver; and tamper evident.
We're always talking about workplace health and safety on this blog, but most of the news stories we look at concern physical injuries: severed fingers, broken bones, that sort of thing.
However, stats suggest that the greatest threat to the health and safety of Britain's workers is not rotating blades, slippery surfaces, unprotected edges, or anything like that.
According to the Trades Union Congress (TUC), which surveyed roughly one thousand health and safety representatives across the UK, the main concern for this country's H&S officials in 2016 was... stress! More...
Last week, we looked at the Alton Towers rollercoaster crash that has been in the news recently and asked what could be learned from the accident that resulted in a number of serious injuries and a multi-million pound fine for park owners Merlin Entertainments.
Probably the single most important takeaway from this mess concerns the importance of risk assessments. Paul Paxton, the lawyer who represented the injured parties in court, criticised Merlin's "catastrophic failure to assess risk" in a statement to the press, and it's hard not to agree with him; you can't help but wonder if the accident at Alton Towers could have been prevented with a more thorough assessment of possible dangers beforehand.
Of course, risk assessments are crucially important in any line of work - just because you're not working with rollercoasters and thrill rides doesn't mean that people can't get hurt on your premises! We at Label Source stock a range of risk assessment kits that will help you to carry out a thorough assessment of all the possible hazards in your workplace. Available kits include:
Click here to see our full collection of risk assessment kits.
Many people have been seriously injured - or worse - while performing routine maintenance on machinery that should have been perfectly safe. Isolating your machines using the correct lockout procedures minimises the risk of unexpected start-ups while maintenance work is in progress, protecting the lives and wellbeing of those doing the work.
Here at Label Source, we sell a range of maintenance tags to help you identify machinery and equipment that, for safety purposes, should not be used. With clear instructions like 'Do not use' and 'Do not start - men working on machine', our maintenance tags are ideal for locking out heavy machinery during services and repairs (although we also stock labels that warn of high voltages, poisons, harmful gases, and other hazards).
In case you're not convinced of how important maintenance tags can be, here's just one example of what can happen when machines aren't properly 'tagged out' while maintenance work takes place. In November 2005, two men in Lanarkshire, Scotland were cleaning the inside of an animal feed mixer when the machine started up unexpectedly and killed them both. The HSE investigated this incident and found that it could have been "easily prevented" if the machine had been properly isolated:
"The process of isolation means establishing a break in the power supply, normally by using a lockable switch, and then securing the switch in the 'off' position using a padlock to prevent it being switched back on until the work is finished." - John Madden, HSE Inspector, speaking in 2008
Once you have completed the lockout process described above, it's important to use a maintenance tag to label the locked machinery and inform other workers that the machine is not to be used (most maintenance tags leave space to explain why the machine is locked out).
The incident you just read about resulted - full story here - in a total fine of £63,750 for the two companies involved, but far more importantly, it led to two deaths that could easily have been prevented. Click here to browse our maintenance tag range, and don't let the same thing happen on your watch!
