When setting up your first business, health and safety can be last on the list of your priorities, for both employees and the customers visiting your business. However, it is vital that your business has the right health and safety procedures to continue to operate and avoid fines and claims against you made by injured parties.

Get Your Emergency Lighting Checked

In Australia, you are legally required as a business to have operating emergency lighting that can signal to visitors where the nearest exit is during an emergency such as a fire or security breach. Emergency lighting is important to direct customers to safe checkpoints quickly and calmly. If these are not visible, it can put both you, your employees, and your customers in danger. However, many businesses do not check that their emergency lighting is working on a regular basis, leading to issues during emergency procedures. To ensure that your emergency lighting systems are working efficiently, you should invest in emergency lighting testing, which can help to determine the safety of your lighting during an unforeseen event alongside government regulations.

Install Online Security Measures

Many businesses, especially those that provide specialist services or who run e-commerce stores as well as a physical shop, store a lot of customer data at any one time, including information such as bank details and addresses. If you do not install the appropriate security measures onto your device, this can lead to hackers and identity thieves accessing your customer’s data and leading to a lack of customer trust in your business. To make sure that your business is safe online, you should install a reliable firewall or security system to analyse any threats that your computer comes into contact with, and use trustworthy applications to store customer data such as the Cloud, which has many protections in place.

Create Evacuation Plans

Businesses who value health and safety will also have developed detail evacuation plans in line with their health and safety plans and guidelines. These plans will allow employees to know what to do in an emergency to help to secure the safety of their customers. For instance, you should state the nearest and most easily accessible exist from any location, the muster points, and who the fire marshals are on any given day. Not only this, but your health and safety plan should also include your responsibilities and how you intend to protect customers, such as doing a risk assessment.

Consider Safety in Your Design

You also need to take a more practical approach to health and safety in the workplace by creating a safe environment to work and shop within. This includes having wide aisles through which customers, including people with disabilities, can browse in safety. You should also make sure that the materials in your design are safety, such as having non-slippery surfaces and checking the building for toxic materials such as asbestos. You should also make sure that there are no live wires or exposed wires in your retail unit to avoid trips and other injuries.

Appoint a Health and Safety Officer

When setting up your business, it is also important to appoint a health and safety officer who can create plans and procedures to increase the safety of your business, attend any safety incidences, and spot and deal with any risks as they arise throughout the running of your day-to-day business. If you are struggling with this, you may consider employing an external professional or consultant who can advise you on how to improve your procedures in terms of health and safety rather than assigning health and safety as a duty to one of your employees.

Perform a Risk Assessment

It is also vital that you perform a risk assessment for your business to make sure that you are aware of any problem areas and so that you are able to find a solution to any potential problems, such as places where visitors could trip or become injured. This check will allow you to ascertain that you are in line with legal health and safety policies and will also help you to create a health and safety policy for your workplace that will keep your customers safe.

If you are concerned about the health and safety of your business for both your employees and your customers, there are a number of steps that you can take to protect anyone on the premises of your business. From sufficient staff training to performing a risk assessment, it is relatively simple to consider health and safety in your business’ set up period.