Health and safety is often treated with a degree of casual disregard – characterised by busy-bodies with nothing better to do than interfere with the workplace or conceive of ever more Byzantine rules for how your business must be conducted. However, this is a serious business. For instance, in the US it was recently calculated that injuries in both the home and at work were actually the leading cause for death amongst people aged up to 44. And it is also estimated that an employee is 20 times more likely to be killed in an incident involving electricity than anything else with which they might have contact.
Even if your company isn’t involved directly with electricity it’s likely your employees will still be in contact with it in one way or another and it is obviously incumbent on any company to ensure the safety of its workforce. Whether you run an industrial site or an office environment, we work in a world of machines and electronic devices and this creates a snake pit of wires and cables. It’s much the same at home of course, where we might find ourselves behind the TV attempting to unravel the DVD Scart cable from the HDMI for the Sky Box. That situation is only multiplied at work, where there are likely, for instance, to be many workstations networked, and plugged into the mains. And one very simple and effective way of contributing to a safe workplace is to organise all the cabling.
Any Health & Safety Executive inspection will quickly identify errant, loose cables as trip hazards, causing workplace injuries that – in the worst-case scenario – might lead to a grievance or even lawsuit. Beyond tripping, disorganised cables can also cause electrical hazards, such as shocks and fires. In the office, for instance, you may have cables and staplers on the same desk, and you can imagine the hazards involved with those two coming together. The same goes for cramping cables together – instead, they need to be spaced out, and laid flat.
Cables can’t simply be left lying around. Instead, don’t leave anything to chance and look to organise the cabling in your workplace, keeping the cables secure, and out of the way. Securing cables using cable management systems will obviously keep everything tidy, but it will also prevent injuries from falls or trips. And it’s not only a matter of cables running along the floor – it may also be that you have a workplace with cables running along walls. These can similarly be accidentally caught, and tugged, causing accidents.
The good news is that solutions and many, varied, affordable and all available from the range we have at Hilltop Products and this article will introduce you to some of the cable options and solutions. These start from basic products such as cable ties and security seals – in a variety of colours to help you easily organise everything. Cable tidy units, meanwhile, will simplify your sockets and help you to declutter the office, while in more industrial workplaces, speed ramps and barriers can carry cables along the floor, while still allowing vehicles to pass over them. If the need is more complex, have a look at our range of sleeving and flexible tubing, which will allow you to gather your cables within one, safe place.
If you still have questions, please contact us at Hilltop, and we can advise on the best way forward for you… and to keep the HSE happy with you and your workplace.
