As more people return to the workplace after the coronavirus pandemic, there is a greater focus on keeping safe in the workplace. Even without COVID-related concerns, though, work environments often pose a high risk of potential injury for employees. Here are five things you should keep in mind when you are looking to keep yourself safe in the post-COVID-19 workplace:
- Make sure you have enough PPE available.
- In the post-COVID world, ensuring there is a ready source of personal protective equipment (PPE) is essential. This can include face masks, as well as gloves, goggles, and anything else necessary to avoid obvious hazards at your workplace. Aside from helping to protect against coronavirus infection, PPE can also protect against burns, shocks, cuts, and other common sources of workplace injuries.
- Maintain proper hygiene, including social distancing when possible.
- Hygiene is always important to keeping people safe in the workplace, but this is only more true with COVID-19. This can include making sure the workplace is free of potential hazards that can result in spreading disease, but also potential hazards that might result in someone slipping or tripping. After all, while getting sick on the job is a concern, falling remains one of the biggest sources of workplace injury across all industries.
- Use and obey warning signs.
- Warning signs might seem like a trite response to potential safety hazards at the workplace. However, when there is a hazard in the workplace that has not been dealt with, a warning sign may be the only protection you get before being confronted with a hazardous situation. Thus, making sure to use and obey warning signs can be an important way of protecting workers from potential harm.
- Report and address known hazards.
- Of course, warning signs are only useful if someone knows the hazard is there in the first place. Potential problems like damaged flooring, water spills, exposed wiring, or dangerous chemicals can all appear in the workplace, with some industries (like construction or transportation) facing these kinds of problems more often. Ensuring people know about these hazards is the first step to protecting people from preventable injuries.
- Don’t cut corners on safety procedures.
- Safety procedures are often tedious, time-consuming, and even potentially costly, but that is all to protect workers from potential harm. The temptation to cut corners is always there, though, and when that happens, it is ultimately the workers who pay the price. That is why if you are injured on the job due to your employer failing to adhere to safety protocols, you should contact an attorney who may be able to help you get compensation for the harm you have suffered.
If you or a loved one have been injured due to someone else’s negligence, you should seek out the workplace injury lawyers at Zlotolow & Associates. Our seasoned New York personal injury attorneys bring more than two decades of trial experience to your case. We serve all five boroughs of New York City, as well as Nassau and Suffolk County. Our aggressive personal injury attorneys always demand maximum compensation. We have helped thousands of clients recover through settlements and courtroom verdicts. To schedule a consultation, you can call us at 866-800-0092, or you can visit our contact page.
