A lot of the time, people don’t necessarily enjoy going to work – we don’t enjoy peeling ourselves out of our nice, warm beds in the morning, we don’t enjoy our commutes, and we don’t enjoy sitting at a desk all day when we could be at home watching Netflix and ordering pizza. But aside from the usual banalities of everyday working life, there is always the risk of injury or accidents in the workplace. Here are some tips to help you avoid that.

Take Regular Breaks

One extremely simple way to stay safe at work is to take regular breaks. The Pomodoro technique says that you should work for twenty-five minutes before taking a five minute break. The human brain is simply not equipped to deal with focusing for extremely long periods of time and it has been proven that taking breaks will reinvigorate you and make sure your creative juices are flowing when you sit down to work again – breaks can really help your mental health. But they can also help your physical health. We aren’t designed to sit down at a desk for eight hours a day – you need to physically stand up and move around at least once an hour so that you can stretch and make yourself comfortable before continuing work.

Invest in Safety

Investing in safety is one of the absolute best ways to make sure that there aren’t any accidents and that everybody stays safe. If people need to lift heavy objects, for instance in a warehouse or in retail or even in an office – those boxes of printer paper are surprisingly weighty – then you need to make sure that they are trained in how to safely do so without injuring their backs. If people are driving long distances, go for a video dash cam that will help you see where they are and that will monitor any issues that will arise.

Follow Directions Carefully

At work it’s very important that you should follow directions carefully. Remember that workplace processes are there for a reason – cutting corners may seem more time and energy efficient sometimes but you don’t know what’s going to happen if you do so, and you could be putting somebody else’s health and safety at risk as well as your own. If you aren’t sure how to operate a piece of machinery, if something seems fine but has a sign saying ‘do not use’, if you are told to walk one way instead of another – it’s important to ask. There is usually a reason for all the safety tips in your workplace.

Keep Your Office Tidy

Finally, it’s important to keep your work space tidy. It can be easy to allow clutter to stack up, but nobody watches where they’re going all the time, and tripping over something that shouldn’t be there could lead to a really bad injury. Make sure that all the walkways and paths in your office are clear of mess and debris so that everyone can get around safely.

Safety in the workplace can be a lot easier than you think – just stick to the established rules and use your common sense and you should be just fine.