Employee Safety Manuals

Employee safety manuals are absolutely indispensable to offices, plants, and distribution centers alike. Whether it's paper, peanuts, petroleum, or anything in between that's the hallmark of your work site, you must address your workers' immediate safety needs. Those owners and managers who don't are not simply in violation of smart business practices but, in many cases, the law as well.

There are a number of organizations whose job it is to ensure employee safety in the workplace and handle claims when they arise. Groups such as OSHA are charged with oversight of occupational safety and health in offices all across America. The EPA, meanwhile, routinely drops by production plants and other facilities to make sure no environmental laws are being broken. Thus, employee manuals should dictate policies not only for individual workers' safety, but for ecological compliance as well.

Murphy's Law

Murphy's Law states that anything that can possibly go wrong eventually will. Workers will trip and fall, drop heavy packages from high places, and mix reactive chemicals. The question isn't just how to prevent such accidents from occurring, but what to do once it's too late. Together, prevention, along with quick and intelligent response, can be a powerful combination.

That said, all the diagrams and schematics in the world won't prevent some employees from lifting boxes or other heavy objects in an improper fashion and throwing out their backs. The best you can hope to do with your employee safety manual is to call your workers' attention to these matters and hope that they're smart enough to follow your guidelines. Ultimately, the most any boss can do is exercise sound judgment when hiring, lay forth all policies in clear language, provide a safe working environment and respond to emergencies if and when they arise.