As spring turns to summer, many Americans are rushing for the thermostat dial to try to ward off the coming heat waves that are going to make life difficult in the weeks ahead.
The workplace can be part of this rampage — people want to be comfortable. And it’s not just a matter of comfort — it’s also a matter of safety. It’s easy to get dehydrated or risk heatstroke without really noticing the pressures on your body. With that in mind, employers have to also look carefully at how to shield their workers from heat-related illness.
Paying Attention to the Basics
Even those involved in more physical work or manual labor fields are doing a significant amount of their work indoors. It’s important for companies to invest in temperature-controlled environments inside buildings. The alternative is a very uncomfortable and potentially unsafe situation where people sweat and toil in a hot room or indoor space. Indoor heat exhaustion can be real, so late spring is always a good time to analyze air conditioning systems, and implement fixes.
OSHA Breaks
When it comes to handling the physical stress of a hot season, the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration or OSHA can be the best resource around.
In years past, OSHA has produced its own campaigns to tackle the issue of heat-related illness. These programs, called Water-Rest-Shade, focus on three things — providing cold water, providing shaded areas, and giving people time to rest.
These three very basic principles can make all the difference between a safe, healthy workforce and serious problems.
It’s important for top managers to deliberately create a safety program, for example, where 15 minutes out of the hour is given for the body to rest and recuperate.
Of course, companies fixated on productivity and profits often cut corners, but that’s really shortsighted and bad for financial outcomes. Pushing extremely high productivity in high-pressure heat is going to lead to low productivity in the form of absenteeism, not to mention the liability of lawsuits or other retaliations by sick or incapacitated employees.
Getting Feedback
One of the best ways to really judge what is good for business is to get feedback from the front lines.
A great company always has its eye on what’s happening on the front — where workers are physically delivering goods and services to customers.
Many of the worst problems with heat-related illness and everything else happens when company leaders withdraw to their ivory towers and sit behind a desk, far removed from the actual physical business operations that bring in the money. Any business with a physical labor component needs continual oversight — not to wring more productivity out of workers, but instead, to do the opposite — to make sure that they are well supported, cared for and assisted in the vital work that they do every day.
About Full Steam Staffing
Full Steam Staffing is a full-service staffing agency in Modesto focused on providing clerical and light industrial staffing solutions to manufacturers, distribution centers and other organizations that need qualified, reliable workers. If you are currently looking to hire and grow your workforce, contact our team of skilled recruiters today!