101 Sale

Posts Tagged ‘signs’

Enjoying a safer workplace is for the good of everyone. A bad workplace safety record imposes costs , not just on the company, but also broadly across the community

Globally it has been estimated that the costs of poor safety at work adds to an estimated 1.25 thousand million US dollars every year. And global, deaths linked to work places amounts to some two million people yearly.

For American businesses it’s been estimated, for every dollar outlaid in workplace safety programs, they get three back – a safety culture at work pays big dividends.

When it comes to improving safe work practices, there is a methodology of surveying hazards, reducing identified hot spot risks and then training and managing for the irreducible exposure . Safety signs slot into this latter task as the ever vigilant reminders of appropriate work practices. Safety signs by themselves don’t make a safe work place – they just reinforce all the other actions

As one might imagine, warning signs have been made to cover thousand’s of different situations and have consequently been organized into functional groups . In order of least to most severe, the safety sign groups are Notice, Stop, Caution, and Danger.

As our desire is to gain the biggest impact improving on safety, we’ll just review the Danger and Caution hazard signs here. 

A caution sign’s role is to advise of conditions not life threatening, but which, could be a risk to human health and/or the environment. Caution signs have a yellow background with a black print for contrast and improved visibility.

As a way of obtaining worker’s attention, the caution sign has effect .

The danger sign means just that; a threat to life exists and failure to observe this sign will have serious consequences: perhaps even death. These signs are limited to the most extreme hot spots and are often discovered in manufacturing – industrial situations, where chemicals, heavy machinery and similar industrial hazards are prevalent.

Knowing the returns on safety investments, safety signs and their content act to make workplaces safe. 

Work warning signs have a powerful role in safety at work. They are placed there for a reason and so workers must respect what the signs message is trying to tell them. Safety signs inform off and state specific hazards. They can be affixed in view of the workers on the site so that they are easily viewed and acted upon by operators and people within that area.

Using the right safety signs

Safety signs comply with a globally uniform means of communication. With the multilingual staffing of organisations today, graphic symbols are the universally understood component of the signs.

There are many kinds of signs: A notice sign is an easy going call “Please follow this request”. A stop sign is used for actions that are not allowed and mean  “Do not and you stop the defined action”.  A caution sign is more serious-minded and is used to say, “Take Caution”, there is a risk to health and in this place there is a hazard. More serious again is the Danger sign where disregarding this sign puts your life at risk. You should stop and proceed only when having followed the required action. Finally, the most serious of all are the Obey signs where observation is essential and, the action is mandatory.

Often in a workplace you will see a number of signs being used in combination to get across both the danger and the behavior that needs to be followed. All safety signs should be placed where they will be highly visible.

Safety signs help in promoting safety and show an organizations commitment to safety.

Industrial Workplace Signage made easily available

Certain businesses have signage specific to them and their sector specific hazards.

As an example, building industry safety signs imparts the hazards inherent to construction.  Sector specific signage is available for many sectors.

There is signage for fire, first aid and the handling and storage of designated chemicals. Without a doubt these signs save lives and are frequently utilised in all businesses. Often these signage requirements are required by legislation and it is imperative for the business operators understand all legal requirements as applies to the site and comply.

Workplace safety signs can be found in a numerous sizes and materials to suit the specific sites demands.

Safer work leads to better workplace welfare and better team moral, all of which to leads to lower costs. It helps to create a culture of safety.