Working on the body of a car is no easy task. You’ll need to manipulate metal like a blacksmith, you’ll need to be intimately familiar with the structure of every different car you work on, and you’ll need to work with a variety of chemicals to get your car back to being as good as new. You’ll need to coordinate with a team, favor certain technician’s skills and provide ways for your employees to grow.
In addition to all of that, you’ll still need to provide your technicians with a feeling of safety and security while they’re in the shop. No one can get very much work done if they’re more concerned about slipping and falling while handling a welding torch than getting the work done correctly. Making sure the technicians in your body shop feel safe is the most important step to increasing productivity and exploring the limits of your shop’s capacity with finesse. For the more safe and relaxed your workers feel, the more they’ll be comfortable with focusing all of their energies on their work and ensuring that it’s high-quality, which, in turn, ensures that you have repeat customers who refer others and trust your body shop above others.
Keeping employees safe doesn’t have to be a daunting task. Simply investing in the right equipment and enabling them with the proper processes to keep them safe and stay within OSHA compliance is all you need to do. If you’re wondering where to start with that, check out our previous article in which we talk about the proper safety equipment you’ll need to keep your technicians and everyone in your shop safe while they work. But there’s more you can do to ensure the safety of your employees.
High-Slip Possibilities
Around 30% of all accidents in the workplace are related to a simple slip and a tumble, according to OSHA. Body shops are notorious for dealing with lots of liquids with a high-viscosity. Liquids like grease, paint, and oil are all high-slip risks that might land your technicians on their rear, back, or head if they’re not cleaned off the ground properly. Help your technicians keep their workspaces tidy and encourage cleaning spills immediately to avoid these issues. Make sure they know to wear non-slip shoes as well. Be sure to encourage stowing away tools when they’re finished and keeping the area as well-kept as possible. Some of that may fall on you to provide proper storage capacity so that it’s easy to keep that in-tact.
Noise Issues
Body shops are noisy places. Welding isn’t a quiet and contemplative art — it’s intense and requires honed focus throughout the entire process, which is difficult because it is so loud. The sounds of grinders, sanders, and other mechanical components that are made to break down and reassemble a car are hard on the ears and can cause permanent damage when precautions aren’t taken. To protect their ears in the long-term, you’ll need to ensure that all of your technicians have ear protection of some kind. Whether they invest in ear muffs or plugs, they’ll need to ensure that the loud sounds of the shop don’t cause any permanent damage to their hearing.
Mechanical Injury
Your technicians work with a variety of very dangerous machinery that allows them to bend metal to their will so they can repair cars seamlessly. The machines they use to complete this work often have quite a few moving parts that can pinch, cut, and generally cause minor to severe bodily harm. When an accident happens in a body repair shop, it’s no small thing and could result in very serious burns, broken digits or limbs, and a variety of potentially far worse physical harm that no good employer would want for their employees to suffer. Be sure that your technicians are wearing the proper protective gear to keep them safe. Invest in the right gloves, the right shoes, and headgear to make sure that they’re always safe while they’re working on projects for you.
Shop Chassis Line Supply For Safety Gear Now
At Chassis Line Supply, we’re here to make outfitting your shop with the body shop equipment you need easy. We provide a whole selection of high-quality racks, painting booths, welders, and more that have high safety ratings and help you keep production up and accidents down. Browse our selection today for more information.