This Health & Safety Week, make sure you're doing everything you can to keep your employees safe!

If you're an employer, you have a number of responsibilities to fulfil when it comes to the health and safety of your workers. These responsibilities are described in detail on the HSE website, but today, we at Label Source would like to focus on 5 of the most important duties that you need to be aware of.

As an employer, you must:

1. Identify any potential risks within the workplace and decide what measures must be taken to control them.

2. Explain any and all risks to your employees. You must also explain what you're doing to control these risks. Make sure that every member of your team fully understands what you are telling them.

3. Protect your workers from harm in the workplace. Do everything you can to minimise the risk of accidents/injuries/illnesses while encouraging all employees to work together to do the same.

4. Train your employees to do their jobs safely and correctly. This training must be provided free of charge.

5. Provide any equipment that your employees will need to stay safe while working. Again, these items must be provided free of charge; possible examples include safety goggles, hard hats, ear protection, work gloves, dust masks, high-visibility clothing, and any other pieces of PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) that might be necessary. You are also obliged to provide first aid facilities, toilets, clean drinking water, and washing facilities for your workers.

Useful Health & Safety Products from Label Source

Personal Protection Safety Signs

Health and Safety Posters

Electrical Warning Labels

Chemical Hazard Signs & Labels

This week is Health & Safety Week throughout the UK, and as you can probably imagine, we at Label Source will be watching the conversation surrounding this event with great interest as the week unfolds. According to SHP Online, the focus for Health & Safety Week 2016 is 'inspiring excellence in the profession', specifically by recognising the people who strive to achieve excellent H&S standards within their organisations.

Of course, providing a safe working environment is the responsibility of the employer first and foremost, but this does not mean that workers should not be encouraged to contribute to health and safety culture within the company. Here are some suggestions for improving company-wide engagement with health and safety practices:

• Reward workers for their initiative. The 'Employee of the Month' award is a common motivational gimmick, but instead of simply handing out a monthly award to the person who did the best (a nebulous standard if ever there was one), why not recognise and reward workers specifically for their ongoing contributions to health and safety? You could even offer a monthly prize (e.g. a gift voucher) to encourage workers to constantly be on the lookout for opportunities to improve workplace safety.
  
  
• Organise a health and safety presentation (to be delivered by your employees). Lecturing your workers on health and safety protocol tends to be a tedious experience for all involved, so why not flip the script and encourage a group of employees to put together an informal presentation based on their own research and ideas? This is a good way to get your employees thinking more carefully about H&S measures and how they are deployed throughout the company, and talented staff members will be able to deliver a presentation that gets the whole team interested too!
  
  
• Include your staff when carrying out/renewing regular health and safety measures. Excluding those who are directly involved in the running of the company, most employees don't think about H&S very often because it's not part of their job. The resulting apathy towards H&S can be countered by getting workers involved in the day-to-day management of the company's health and safety system - possible examples include asking employees to order any new safety labels that may be required, enlisting them to help with informal risk assessments, or even just regularly reminding them of established protocol (e.g. via fire drills and refresher training).
  
  
• Quiz your employees! There are probably safety signs and hazard notices dotted all over your workplace, but do the people who use the premises on a daily basis actually know what everything means? To find out, organise a quiz like this one - offer a prize for perfect scores, and give everyone time to revise and brush up their knowledge beforehand!

Be sure to follow Label Source on Twitter for more health and safety insight and conversation during Health & Safety Week (as well as all year round!)

Engineering labels are used to warn users of potential hazards that may cause injurie when working with machinery, equipment and industrial products as well as the correct procedures of use. Engineering labels are incredibly useful for many engineering and work sites, as there is a wide variety of different machinery and equipment that require you to warn the users of the different potential hazards and procedures 

We have a large variety of Engineering Labels here at Label Source, covering a huge range of potential hazards and correct procedures for use, mandatory engineering labels such as read manual, wear eye/ hand / ear protection and keep locked labels. We also stock a huge selection of hazard warning signs. All of our labels are made from self-adhesive polyester and are supplied in rolls of 250 labels each. The labels are rub, abrasion and chemical-resistant and can operate in temperatures ranging from -30 C to +120 C, perfect for use in an industrial environment. These labels are available in two sizes 15mm x 15mm and 25mm x 25mm, making these labels ideal for labelling machinery, equipment and industrial products. 

If you would like to view our full range of Engineering Labels, click here.

If you cannot find a sign that meets your exacting requirements, please don’t hesitate to contact us. You can get in touch by calling 0800 3761 693 or emailing info@labelsource.co.uk where an expert member of our customer service team will be on hand to help you. 

Thermal transfer printing can offer many benefits over direct thermal, laser or inkjet printing. It can provide durable, high definition labels, which can withstand exposure to ultraviolet (UV), and temperature extremes, and are chemical and abrasion resistant.

In addition, if printing is required other than black, there are coloured thermal transfer ribbons available, and with some materials there are colour options. Also, the thermal transfer technology allows the use of different substrate materials including paper, polypropylene, vinyl, destructible vinyl, polyester and tamper evident polyesters.

If you have an on-site demand for printing labels, for marking assets or inventory, healthcare or laboratory marking, quality control stickers, product nameplates and compliance labels, or shipping labelling, we have an extensive range of paper and synthetic labelstock on three core sizes, 76.2mm (3 inch), 25.4mm (1 inch) and 40mm. By combining our materials with the correct ribbon type, you can create long lasting labels for indoor or outdoor applications (weatherproof and waterproof for synthetics), including one and two dimensional barcodes, serial numbering, and labels conforming to CE, UL and CSA standards.

These labels are configured to be used on a variety of industrial, desktop and handheld printers from Zebra, Citizen, Toshiba TEC, Intermec and Datamatrix.

It’s been a while since we have done a health and safety gone mad blog post, so this afternoon, we have spent some time this afternoon rounding up all the “health and safety gone mad” stories that have been reported this month for some light Friday afternoon reading. 

So without any further ado here is our top health and safety gone mad stories for this month;

1.Council Killjoys ban bunting at an annual carnival over health and safety fears that someone could be injured by the colourful decorative flags. 

Decades the small Cornish town of Lostwithiel has hung traditional decorations through the streets of the town during carnival week. However this year they could face having their carnival without the traditional cloth flags because “inappropriately hung bunting can create a danger to highway users and draping it across the streets without taking suitable precautions is risky.”  

You can read the whole story here.

2.Health and safety gone mad as seaside town’s benches faces AWAY from the sea

Ok, so the whole point of going to the sea side is to gaze out across the sea and enjoy the spectacular views. Well if you are planning a trip to Maryport Town this summer prepare to be disappointed! The council have installed benches that face away from the sea because they are concerned that tourists may step around the bench to sit down and “topple into the sea” surely it would have been a better idea to install a railing?! 

Click here to read more. 

3. Health and Safety gone Mad? Greater Anglia to scrap clipping train tickets to protect wrists

ITV Reported that the Greater Anglia rail network are going to stop their train conductors from using the traditional hole punch to mark checked tickets and encourage them to use a red marker pen in fear that the hole punch is hurting their wrists. Understandably their passengers were less than impressed when the decision was announced labelling it pathetic!! 

Read the full article here.

4.Blooming Cheek! Health and safety officials order greengrocer to remove plants from outside his shop after someone tripped over

Okay, so this one isn’t completely nuts, a greengrocer from Ilkley, West Yorkshire, has been told to remove the plants that he displays outside his shop after a pedestrian tripped over one of his plants.  The fact of the matter is that he does have a huge amount of flowers on the pavement outside of his shop, which is a trip hazard in itself. But the council advised that they are willing to come to a compromise over the extent of his display. Let’s hope that he can carry on showcasing his flowers outside, just not in such a way that poses a trip hazard to the public.

Read the whole story here. 

Have you heard any crazy health and safety stories this month? Let us know! In the meantime, make sure you follow us on facebook and twitter for more health and safety stories.