HSE Corner ; Managing body hygiene of Employees
In Health, Safety and Environment Professions, a great number of things to consider is good hygiene and most importantly the body hygiene of the employees.
A lot of time, human are the carrier of disease agent so the more hygienic these Employees put themselves, the less bacteria ,viruses etc one will have to combat with.
Body hygiene includes taking care of uniforms , shoes, nails, hair and caution on the use of contrabands within the plant most especially during operations.
Today we will be discussing how to guide Employees towards good hygiene.
1. Have a policy that affirms cleanliness.
There is a saying that cleanliness is next to godlyness. That will be in normal day live but in Safety industries, cleanliness is next to safety. A clean person is lot of steps close to safety from all carrier of diseases.
This is why making a firm policy about cleanliness is very important. There should be a standard idea of how their uniform should look at all time ( With this, the staff will now decide among themselves how many time they choose to wash their wears in a week). The use of makeup and perfume should be to the most minimum. Shoes and all forms of wear should have a policy of staying clean at all time.
A time table maybe written and placed at the entrance of the Plant to remind your Employees how cleanliness is very important to the company .
2. Be very sensitive to potential health issues
A lot of time, many issues like sweaty body, smelly mouth and offensive odour from any part of the body maybe a symptom of a particular illness which your staff is battling with, in situation like this, there is a need to differentiate between it as a cleanliness issues or as an ailment especially when the health of other maybe at stake.
The company should have a method of doing medical routine check up for staff to know their health state .
3. Be Professional in dealing with issues .
A typical type of issue to be Professional about is the point in number two, the moment you realised a certain hygiene issues is disease related, under no circumstances should another Employees be the one to discuss with the Employees in question. You should discuss with the Employee in question yourself to decide on how best you can solve this with them.
In a situation where it may be a critical condition and poses danger to the health of other employees, moving them to department which involves less people and the most minimum contact should be done to avoid spread .
4. Provision of Washing material
Employees at times shy away from staying clean due to absence of items like soap etc. Provision for items like this should be made available at the store at all time. Most Especially for factory workers who does the tedious one
5. Factory wears should be cost friendly
I know of situation where factory workers have to pay to get their factors wears, if a company find itself in this situation, the cost of getting these wears should be friendly enough for the employees to always have to change their clothing once it is needed .
- HSENations
