Road worker safety in the highways industry
Road worker safety is paramount to any business that works on the road. Get it wrong, and it could be fatal.
In this guide you’ll find everything you need to know in order to keep your road workers safe.
Road worker safety is paramount to any business that works on the road. Get it wrong, and it could be fatal.
In this guide you’ll find everything you need to know in order to keep your road workers safe.
What you’ll learn:
- What PPE you should be using
- How important vehicle checks are and how often they need to be done
- How often training should be done
- How the Working Time Directive feeds into safety
- How to help employee’s mental health
PPE
Personal Protective Equipment is a legal requirement designed to keep your workers safe.
According to statistics from the Health and Safety Executive, being struck by a moving vehicle is the second biggest single cause of workplace fatalities.
Wearing the correct PPE can greatly decrease the chances of both collisions and injury.
Here’s a list of what every road worker should be equipped with:
- Hard hats
- Shoes
- High-Vis vests
- Goggles
- Gloves
- Respiratory protection
- Hearing Protection
Vehicle checks
Research carried out for the Driving Change report found that 77% of UK highway managers view vehicle checks as the single most important factor in accident prevention.
Training
All road workers require health and safety training when they join a workforce, but to really keep your workers safe, that training needs to be refreshed.
Some areas of refresher training to explore include:
- Changes to work processes
- Accidents or incidents
- Compliance monitoring
- Legislative changes
Working Time Directive (WTD)
Accidents can happen when workers are tired. It’s important that as managers we ensure our teams aren’t working excessive hours or without a break.
Working long hours can affect your workers concentration, or even provide incentive for them to rush jobs and cut corners, such as forgetting to conduct risk assessments or fill out due diligence, opening your business up to the possibility of fines.
Requiring your employees to work excessive hours could lead to prosecution and unlimited fines. Any worker injured as a consequence of an employer’s negligence in failing to provide safe working conditions may sue for compensation in the civil courts.
Health and Wellbeing
Road workers operate in dangerous and pressurised environments, so it’s important we look out for their health and wellbeing.
A recent study found that nearly half of construction workers experience poor mental health due to work-related issues.
As managers, here are 4 things we can do to improve the health and wellbeing of our employees:
Quote
Create a Plan
Enforce Job Processes
Tackle stress factors
Road worker abuse
Unfortunately, road workers experience abuse every day while doing their jobs. This abuse can vary from verbal threats to physical attacks and life-threatening vehicle incursions.
Stamp It Out is a cross-industry campaign that aims to raise public awareness, encourage incident reporting and improve the legal protections for highway workers.
MyMobileWorkers features to improve worker safety
Automated timesheets
With our automated, built-in timesheets, you can be alerted when workers are close to, on or over their hours.
Forced compliance
The forced compliance feature means that vehicle checks and risk assessments have to be done, with photo and signature evidence.
Lone working
The lone worker product allows your mobile workers to check-in regularly and activate panic alarms if they’re in danger, allowing you to respond quickly.
See how MyMobileWorkers can help your business:
MyMobileWorkers is the only mobile workforce management platform that can be fully adapted to ensure job processes are followed and provides ongoing, real-time updates for you and your clients.