Keeping your workplace safe is essential for maintaining employee and customer morale, productivity, and profitability. The average workplace injury costs businesses around $43,000 per incident, while a death can cost around $1,460,000. Investing in workplace safety is good for your team and good for your budget.
However, improving workplace safety can also be a big challenge. From culture to protective equipment to First Aid and Safety products, there are many different areas where any workplace can shore up their safety standards.
Keep reading, and we’ll explore 10 actionable strategies you can use to make safety a top priority in your workplace in 2026.
Build a safety-first culture
Workplace safety doesn’t just happen. Prioritizing safety requires making safety a core value at all levels of the organization, from the management at the top deciding policies to the workers implementing best practices in their actual roles. Everyone needs to buy in, feel empowered, and hold themselves and each other accountable.
To create a safety-first culture, make sure your workplace has:
Commitment from leadership
Strong communication
Ongoing training
Consistent standards
Helpful feedback
Building a safety-first culture has a lot of benefits beyond reducing accidents and injuries. Employees feel secure and safe in their roles, leading to reduced stress and improved productivity. There are fewer injuries taking team members away from their jobs, and the turnover rate goes down as well.
Encourage near-miss reporting and shift to leading indicators
A key step to establishing a safety-first culture is to document, analyze, and learn from near-miss incidents. Near misses occur before nearly 85% of deaths in the workplace. Understanding why a near miss occurred and taking steps to fix the problem can dramatically improve your workplace’s safety.
Encourage your team to report near misses and teach them how to recognize these incidents. Even with a culture of safety and near-miss reporting, some employees may fear retaliation for reporting unsafe conditions, and an anonymous system can increase report rates by up to 50%.
Focusing on leading indicators like near misses offers a more proactive way to understand your workplace’s safety needs, identify early warning signs, and address problems before they arise. Lagging indicators are important to track, but they only show what happened in past events. Lagging indicators include:
Injury rates
Lost time
OSHA incidents
Property damage costs
Workers’ compensation claims
By focusing on leading indicators and celebrating successes, safety becomes a priority for everyone. Common leading indicators include:
Completion of safety trainings
Closure rates for audits or incident reports
Near-miss reporting
Participation in safety programs
Make safety products visible, organized, and easy to access
In an emergency, every second counts. If someone has a heart attack, for example, every minute without treatment decreases their chance of survival by around 10%. Unfortunately, only 50% of workers know where to locate an automated external defibrillator (AED) at their workplace.
First Aid Cabinets, AEDs, Eyewash Stations, and other safety products should be clearly visible and easily accessible for both staff and customers. Keep your First Aid products stocked and up to date, and regularly check your kits or cabinets to replace used or expired products. Walk through your workplace and make sure your Safet Stations are easy to see and unobstructed.
Keeping your safety supplies ready for use can be a challenge. Replacing used and expired items can become a big chore, especially if you have a large location or multiple worksites that need coverage. That’s where a managed health and safety program, like Alsco Uniforms, can help. We can set up Safety Stations complete with First Aid Cabinets, AEDs, and Eyewash Stations, and we will regularly deliver fresh First Aid products and check the condition of your equipment.
Upgrade to task-specific PPE and garments
The best safety equipment for a job will depend on, well, the job. Generic PPE and work uniforms may offer some level of protection, but they may not be the right choice for the specific tasks that your team handles. When selecting PPE for a role, you should assess the hazards that role will face.
For example, employees who work around open flames or hot materials may need fire resistant clothing, while workers on a roadside crew should probably have high visibility workwear. Some roles may require specific helmets that protect against a particular type of impact, while other jobs need distinct types of face masks to protect against particulates or chemical fumes.
Standardize fit testing and inclusivity
When it comes to safety, one size does not fit all. Beyond selecting the right PPE and uniforms for the job, you should also make sure that everything fits the employees who will actually be using it. A managed uniform cleaning service can help by tailoring your rented uniforms to each individual employee.
OSHA recently finalized rules on correct fit requirements for construction PPE, and more and more workplaces are recognizing the benefits of a good fit. Like many safety standards, making sure PPE and uniforms fit your employees well can directly benefit your bottom line by improving productivity and morale while reducing risk and liability.
Provide consistent and frequent training
Safety training shouldn’t be a one-time thing. Providing consistent, frequent, and short scenario-based training programs can help your team stay on top of safety standards, without overwhelming them with too much information.
Offering these regular refreshers will help your team know your safety procedures better than a large slide deck or long video once a year. As you implement safety training programs, consider utilizing weekly 5–10-minute safety refreshers or reminders. Job-site simulations and training exercises can help your employees understand what to do if an incident does occur.
Treat heat stress as a year-round risk
Heat stress is a major safety risk. Around the world, more than 22.85 million workers suffer from injuries or illness due to excessive heat every year. Heat stress is often associated with the summer months, but heat stress can affect people year-round and in both indoor and outdoor workplaces.
OSHA is actively increasing rules and regulations around heat stress, and they are working to improve enforcement of existing guidelines. Failing to protect workers from excessive heat can lead to more incidents, increased downtime, lost profits, and even legal liability.
There are concrete steps you can take to prevent heat stress in the workplace:
Provide plenty of drinking water
Offer rest breaks and shaded or cool areas
Keep an eye out for signs of heat stress
Dress for the heat with breathable, moisture-wicking work uniforms
Prioritize ergonomics
Overexertion and bodily reaction make up 31% of all workplace injuries. Repetitive motion injuries, caused by repetitive tasks like typing or working on an assembly line, make up a significant portion of these injuries, and prioritizing ergonomics in the workplace can go a long way to reducing these incidents.
As you evaluate the ergonomics in your workplace, make sure that workers are supported whether they stand or sit for their shift. If they sit, make sure they have good chairs with back support and encourage regular breaks to stand, stretch, and walk around. If they stand, anti-fatigue mats can help prevent injuries from long shifts.
Focus on sanitation
Millions of people get sick every year, but falling ill often doesn’t stop them from going out and about. Around 90% of Americans have reported going to work sick, and any worksite can quickly become a breeding ground for viruses and bacteria.
Keeping a workplace clean and sanitized can prevent contamination and reduce sick hours and downtime. Organize your workplace so that it is regularly cleaned with chemicals that can ensure proper sanitation. A managed chemical delivery system can ensure you have the products you need to keep your workplace clean, without the hassle of dealing with large batches of concentrates.
Control contamination with hygienic laundering
Depending on your industry, keeping your uniforms and linens hygienically clean may be a strict requirement. Food and beverage, food processing, healthcare, and hospitality businesses need to use linens and uniforms that are free of mold, bacteria, and other harmful elements.
Washing uniforms and linens yourself may not get the job done, as home laundry systems often don’t meet standards of hygienic cleanliness. A linen cleaning service can use better cleaning methods, hotter temperatures, and stronger chemicals to make sure that your linens and uniforms are hygienically clean for every shift.
Let Alsco Uniforms Help
Keeping your team supplied with the right uniforms for the job, nonslip and anti-fatigue floor mats, and safety and First Aid supplies can be a big task, but Alsco Uniforms can handle all the busywork.
With our managed delivery program, we’ll drop off hygienically clean laundry, wash your soiled linens and uniforms, and restock your First Aid supplies. We make sure you have everything you need, so your team can focus on creating a safe workplace.
Contact us to learn more about how we can help make your business safer.