As with any workplace, it’s crucial that you keep your employees safe from the hazards that surround them during work hours. This is especially important in relatively dangerous lines of work such as mining. There are many ways to go about reducing hazards in a mining facility. Here are a few that will help you improve safety in your mining business.
Increase awareness of dangers
When you work in mining, danger lurks on every corner. Whether it’s falling debris or risky walking paths, there’s always something that can cause injury in the workplace. While many of these dangers are preventable, some of them just require that you remain vigilant and watch your step.
This can present a safety problem, as workers get used to the job and start foregoing safety measures and regulations. The dangers are still present, and it’s important that you remind employees of this and keep their awareness up.
Organize safety seminars and training sessions on a regular basis. This will keep their minds on the potential dangers and how they can avoid them. Creating a culture that keeps safety a priority will do a lot of good for preventing injuries in the workplace.
Improve communication
Most accidents and injuries can be blamed on lacklustre communication. When your workplace features powerful pieces of machinery that are operated by many personnel at once, you have to make sure that lines are open. It’s hard for employees to know where each and every one of their coworkers is at every moment.
Proper planning and communication reduce the chance of injury occurring in a dangerous workplace such as a mining facility. If employees are aware of what their colleagues are doing at any given moment, they can better plan their movements with machinery and equipment. Make sure they have walkie-talkies to communicate with one another while they operate them.
Teams of individuals should do their best to plan out their movements and explain how they’ll finish a task. With good coordination, you can count on minimal chances of mistakes or accidents with dangerous equipment.
Use reliable equipment
Accidents aren’t always the fault of negligent behaviour and improper training. In many cases, it’s the equipment that’s the problem. If your machinery is faulty, it’s a lot more likely that the safety mechanisms will fail and lead to injury.
It’s crucial that you use the most reliable equipment you can find. It’s going to ensure the safety of your employees while also increasing the efficiency of the work being done. Start with your most essential machines. Transport vehicles are often checked for their safety and reliability, but what about other forms of transport?
Conveyor belts are essential for mining work, but they aren’t the safest machines to be around. The belt itself needs to be tough and adapted to the material that it transports. When fitted with the right conveyor belt rollers, you have a much safer piece of machinery. Make sure you also choose the right conveyor for the weight of items and materials that you intend to transport. This way, it will be much more reliable.
Document safety procedures
It’s not enough that you provide safety training for employees. Knowing roughly what to do to ensure safety doesn’t cut it. Everyone needs to have their exact role documented. The safety procedures and tests you do need to be clearly defined and assigned to each individual. This way, there can be no doubt of what employees need to do to ensure a safe environment.
No one’s memory is perfect and training only does so much. Display these safety procedures in key locations and you won’t have to worry about people missing certain things. It’s a great way to remind employees what to do without having to rely on semi-regular training sessions.
Conclusion
There’s no way to guarantee absolute safety in the mining business, but you can come pretty close to it with some key measures. If you apply some of the aforementioned ideas, it’s going to make safety an integral part of your business and keep employees safe.
