Safety tips for every business store
Having a store as a business is a huge achievement. When building your store and kitting out its interior, you must ensure to focus on more than just the aesthetic look. You must ensure to install the right safety features for the sake of you, your staff, and your customers.
Maintaining health and safety in the workplace will ensure to help avoid any physical or mental problems among your employees and store customers. On that note, here are the top safety tips for every businesses store.
The correct fire safety features
Every workspace or store should host the correct fire safety features. Even if you don’t work with or around fire environments, any building can be vulnerable to fire. In the event of a fire, you will need the right safety measures in place to put the fire out and protect whoever is in the building as well as save your business.
A fire extinguisher classification will ensure that your workplace meets the safety regulations, which will help you avoid fire risk as well as fines. A classification will verify that you have the right measures in place for a fire-safe business store.
Emergency exits
Every building in the world needs easy access to emergency exits in the event of a fire, an incident, or anything else that poses a danger to those in the building. As a business, it is vital to have access to an emergency exit in the event of an incident.
As well as having an emergency exit, or more, it is important to have clear signs directing your staff and customers towards them. Having them clearly labeled will ensure that anyone in the building can find the exit quickly and easily.
Double locks
It is obvious to have locks for your doors and windows when you are not in the building. However, having double locks will ensure that you can heighten the security of your store. Double locks will be more of a challenge for potential intruders to get into.
Double locks should feature on your windows and doors, as well as any expensive belongings inside the building. The lock could be two keys or a combination of different types of locks, such as keypads or fingerprint devices.
CCTV cameras
Every business should own CCTV systems to monitor their business. If you own a workspace and work away from home, then you should ensure to have CCTV cameras on the building.
Likewise, it is extremely beneficial to have CCTV cameras for your store so that you can have the same safety measures in place. Having CCTV cameras will ensure that you can monitor your store after closing time and have evidence should anyone try to intrude on your store.
Having CCTV will help you should anyone try to intervene with your store when you are not there. It will give you peace of mind and also heighten your security. With CCTV cameras in place, it will deter most intruders and reduce the vulnerability of your store.
Alarms
Similarly, having alarms on your store will mean that should someone try to intrude on the property when you aren’t there or aware, alarm sounds will start to alert you and deter intruders.
Alarms will be difficult for anyone other than you (or your staff that has the code) to turn off. So, if anyone does try to intervene then they will have less of a chance to do much damage as you or surrounding members of the public can act upon the issue.
Assess your store for hazards
Every now and then you should take it upon yourself to assess your store for hazards. A regular assessment will help you acknowledge if you need to fix anything that could be a danger to yourself and others.
Likewise, it will help you tighten the safety measures of your business in areas that you feel make your business vulnerable.
Some tips for assessing your store for hazards include:
● Review your CCTV video storage
● Review your floors, doors, and windows
● Check the fire safety equipment
● Assess the condition of the pipes
● Try the alarms
● Ensure emergency exits are clear
Reassess your training
Every business store should have safety measures in place, which all staff should be aware of. They should know how they work and how to inform customers of them should there be an incident that requires protecting customers.
With training in place, it can be useful to reassess the training techniques every so often so that you can remind yourself and your staff of how to protect and secure your business.
This could be as simple as going over the safety measures of your business in monthly meetings with your staff. Likewise, leave a safety book in the store that staff can assess every time that they want to remind themselves of the safety procedures.
Use wet floor signs
Every store will need regular cleaning, which will involve washing the floors. When floors are washed, or become wet due to the weather, then ensure to use wet floor signs for the safety of your staff and your business customers.
If your floor is wet and no floor signs are present, you could be vulnerable to paying a fine and ending up with an injured and very unhappy customer. Using wet floor signs will protect your business and your customers.
Train staff on how to lift objects
Should your businesses staff need to lift heavy objects, it is important to help them avoid back injuries by training them on how to safely lift heavy objects.
Although many people will feel capable of lifting heavy objects, some may lack the knowledge of how to avoid back injuries.
Lifting heavy objects could result in serious back injuries, which can be easily avoided with the right understanding of how to lift objects in the store.
Ladder safety
Speaking of staff training to avoid injury, it is useful beneficial to train staff on how to use ladders safely. From time to time, ladders will likely need to be used so that staff can restock shelves or get something from a high cupboard.
Training staff to be safe when using ladders will ensure that they don’t cause safety issues for themselves or anyone around them while they are using the ladder.
Likewise, ladders shouldn’t be left out in the store unattended. Should a customer come into contact with it and it falls over on them, you could be in a lot of trouble and the customer could get seriously hurt.
Use labels wisely
Using labels around the store will ensure that safety issues are clear to all staff and customers. For instance, should there be a sudden step or dip in the flooring, a label will ensure that everyone can be aware of the hazard and avoid it.
Anything that poses a potential hazard should be labeled and clear so that everyone can maintain safety.
Keep it clear
Keeping your store clean and clear will ensure that there are no potential hazards for customers to trip over or get injured by. Cleaning your store after each customer touches products will ensure that everything is in a safe place.
Clearing your store will make sure that you and your customers can maintain safety, and also have easy access to emergency exits should anything happen.
Using this guide you can heighten and maintain the safety of your business store. Installing the right measures will ensure that you and your customers can avoid injury and maintain safety at all times.
