Water safety is often one of those hurdles that business owners aim to just about jump over. While this kind of approach can get you by for so long, as a long-term solution, it will rarely work in your favour.
Taking water safety seriously is crucial for the ongoing success of your business, not just in terms of avoiding legal and branding issues but also in creating a comfortable environment for your employees and customers. For a few important tips on how to practically embrace that kind of approach, read on.
Ensure accountability
One of the most important things to take care of when it comes to ensuring water safety is a clear delineation of responsibility and accountability. In most settings, this will be achieved through the creation of a water safety plan.
As a general framework that outlines how you intend to tackle the issue of water safety in your premises, the plan will include the assignment of certain roles to people within and without the organisation. From a Responsible Person to other relevant specialists, these clearly established roles are important to ensure that no areas of risk management go unchecked.
Go beyond regulatory compliance
While it’s obviously important that you comply with the applicable regulations covering water safety, this should be a bare minimum if you intend on taking water safety seriously. By treating those regulations as minimum requirements, once they’ve been met, you can work on implementing measures that go above and beyond.
Think about important details such as how easy the water systems are to use, how much training they will require for new members of staff, and other critical but technically non-essential aspects. These small changes can make a big difference in the long run, both the water safety and the experience of your employees.
Embrace technology
While a lot of water-related health risks remain the same as they were hundreds of years ago, one thing has changed substantially: the technologies that we have to deal with those risks. It’s crucial that you embrace any technological solutions that might be applicable to the precise risks you’re facing. Those might consist of anything from automatic temperature regulation valves, to systems that regularly test water for certain impurities.
Train your employees
Lastly, getting the latest tech won’t be enough to make your water safety issues go away – your employees will also need to have the training to use that tech. Make sure that you provide regular training sessions to your employees, especially those who have an elevated level of responsibility when it comes to water safety.
While human operators can often be the weakest links in these kinds of risk management systems, they can also be indispensable when it comes to spotting errors and predicting issues before they occur, but only when they’re properly prepared.
In the current turbulent business environment, no businesses can afford to take these kinds of existential issues lightly. Taking things such as water safety seriously requires a little research and effort in the short term, but will always be worth it in the long run.
