Compliant occupational hygiene practices protect businesses in several ways.
If you were to take a minute to list some of the ways dust exposure could impact your operations, what would you come up with? To start with, dust particle exposure could impact staff wellbeing, who would need to take some time off to recover, resulting in increased business downtime. However, staff exposure could also see the business getting fined, and its overall reputation being damaged. Now, take a moment to consider some of the other occupational hygiene risks your business may be exposed to, it could be anything from poor ventilation, overheating, loud noises, and so on. Staff exposure to just one of these risks could severely impact your business, and that is why it is so important for companies to keep up with their occupational hygiene responsibilities. This article will discuss three important ways compliant occupational hygiene practices protects companies.
- Thoroughly identifying all occupational hygiene risks.
One of the challenges businesses face when working to develop compliant occupational hygiene practices is fully identifying the potential risks their business is exposed to. The risks your company may be exposed to will depend upon several factors, including its industry, size, type of work conducted, how many staff are typically onsite, and so on. Further, conducting your own internal audit of the scope of occupational hygiene risks your business is exposed to risks potentially overlooking something; you may identify potential risks concerning poor air quality, overheating, ventilation, and dust exposure, but by simply overlooking one potential occupational hygiene risk you may be putting your entire operations at risk.
Contracting the services of a certified occupational hygienist helps business’ address this challenge. They are an industry professional, trained at identifying and cataloguing the scope of occupational hygiene risks a business is exposed to. They will conduct a comprehensive occupational hygiene audit of your premises to ensure the extent of occupational hygiene risks are identified and catalogued. This means that your business will have a clear idea of exactly what risks it needs to address, and then work at implementing compliant strategies for doing so, which leads to the second point.
- Assess all risks to ensure they are meeting compliance obligations.
Following the first step, the occupational hygiene risks must then be measured against relevant compliance standards to determine whether they are being met. An occupational hygienist will have a comprehensive knowledge of your business’ occupational hygiene obligations, and thus be able to assess whether the identified risks are within compliant levels.
If a risk is discovered as exceeding compliant obligations the occupational hygienist will then work with the business to develop a clear action plan for both bringing the risk to compliant levels and ensuring it stays there, which leads into the final point.
- Develop control measures for ensuring risks never exceed compliant levels.
It is important to note that even if identified occupational hygiene risks are assessed as meeting compliance obligations, this merely affirms that the risks were within compliant levels at the time of the audit.
However, business compliance obligations are frequently changing in accordance with COVID obligations, and new business restrictions may result in companies having to significantly tighten their occupational hygiene practices. A certified occupational hygienist can help organisations with this, by working with them to develop effective control measures for always keeping risks within compliant levels.
Through strategies such as clear documentation processes, visible signage alerting visitors about their onsite responsibilities, and the development of a routine occupational hygiene auditing schedule, business’ will effectively develop control measures for staying on top of their occupational hygiene risks, and ensuring they never exceed compliant levels.
Our specialist consultants can help your business with this process
This article aims to provide an introduction into the structured process of occupational hygiene audits, and how they help businesses achieve their wider operational goals. Through compliant occupational hygiene practices, companies will see reduced downtime, a more productive workplace, not be at risk of fines, and be able to uphold their reputation as a safe company to both work for and with.
However, reading this article may have left you with some questions about the specifics of this process, how it can be tailored to your operations, what businesses should be doing to prepare for an onsite occupational hygiene audit, and so on. Please contact our specialist consultants today by email at sales@anitechgroup.com or by phone on 1300 802 163 for a short, obligation-free consultation about some of the occupational hygiene risks your business may be exposed to, and how a certified occupational hygienist can help you mitigate them.
By telling our consultants about your operations, including information about its industry, size, worksites, number of staff typically onsite, and so on, they can explain to you how an occupational hygiene audit can be specifically applied to your operations to ensure it gets the maximum benefit from this process. Following this, they can arrange for a certified occupational hygienist to travel to your workplace, under COVID-Safe conditions, at a time that is convenient for you, to conduct this audit, and work towards protecting your business and keeping it a competitive industry player. Wouldn’t you agree that this sounds like something worth knowing more about?
Please click here to learn more about how compliant occupational hygiene practices help businesses demonstrate a commitment to safety.