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

While people tend to place greater emphasis on health and safety risks in areas such as construction and factory work, it's important to remember that there are health and safety risks in any workplace, regardless of the location or nature of the work.

An office can seem like a rather inoffensive and risk-free work location for the most part, but as I have already noted, no work location can claim to be completely safe. This is why it's important to have the correct signs on display in your office, to direct your staff in the case of an emergency, and to comply with health and safety legislation.

Here are the 3 most important signs you should have on display at all times:

Health and Safety Law Notice: 

This sign outlines the law on health and safety for you and your staff, it's also a legal obligation to display this notice in the workplace.

Fire Action Safety Sign:

The Fire Action sign is part of our mandatory safe sign range, and is intended to inform both staff and visitors of the correct action to take in the event of discovering a fire.

Fire Exit Symbol:

Another vitally important part of fire safety is ensuring that all fire exits are marked correctly. This Fire Exit sign is part of our Safe Conditions safety sign range.

To view our full range of safety signs, click here. 

The Safety Signs and Signals Regulations act of 1966 states that there are specific mandatory signs required in the workplace, depending on the equipment and health and safety risks present in your workplace. Label Source has an extremely sophisticated range of Mandatory Safety Signs on offer. All of our prohibition mandatory health and safety signs for the workplace are produced to UK, EU and international standards ISO EN 7010.

Wash your Hands Symbol Safety Sign 

Our range of mandatory signs for the workplace aim to dictate actions to be taken or appropriate behaviour to be executed in the face of any health and safety risks in the workplace. Our signs will increase health and safety risk prevention and are consequently extremely important to consider - as well as being mandatory, of course. 

Place all Rubbish in Bins Provided Symbol and Text Sign 

All our mandatory health and safety signs consist of a blue circle with a white pictogram and text panels of white text on a blue background which is clear enough to be seen in the workplace. The categories for our mandatory signs include the use of equipment including general mandatory safety signs, personal protective equipment (PPE), utilities service mandatory safety notices, manual handling mandatory signs and warning labels, fire action and kitchen safety. 

Displaying the correct mandatory safety signs in the workplace not only displays your commitment to the health and safety of your staff, customers and the general public, but also ensures that anyone who enters your premises is fully aware of the health and safety standards expected in your workplace. To ensure that your business complies with the correct work and safety-related legislations then get your mandatory safety signs from Label Source today!