9 Essentials For Commercial Property Safety

Commercial properties face risks on multiple levels, and proactively managing them is key to making sure that everyone — including the public, employees, and tenants — is kept safe while on the premises.

All too often, commercial property owners only think about the safety of their site when there’s an obvious safety risk or, even worse, when something goes wrong. Those problems, as well as others, including insurance legitimacy and ensuring full compliance, can be avoided by ensuring that the premises have the essential safety systems in place. 

In this post, we’ll provide a close-to-comprehensive guide on the essentials of commercial property safety, which can function as a checklist for commercial property managers. Let’s dive in.

Secure Access

Ensuring that the property has secure access doesn’t just help control who can enter the facility. It also serves to provide employees with the psychological safety required to feel comfortable while in the workplace.

In this day and age, there are multiple options that are much more functional than physical keys. Access control systems are particularly recommended, since they allow for much greater control over who can access various parts of the facility, and can also provide valuable data in the event of a safety incident. 

Surveillance Cameras

Surveillance cameras come in extremely handy when there’s an incident, since they’re designed to capture evidence that can help to figure out what happened and how. 

But actually, the most immediately obvious benefit of having quality surveillance cameras at a facility is that they can deter incidents from occurring in the first place. A person is simply much less likely to attempt a break-in or other activity that can put a business and its employees at risk if they know that they’re being recorded. 

Fire Safety

The number of fires at commercial properties in the United States has decreased significantly in the past few decades, and that’s not by accident. Modern infrastructure helps to keep facilities and employees safe in the event of a fire incident. Ensuring that your commercial property has the essentials in place is key to minimizing the risk. This includes installing quality fire-rated doors, which help to reduce the spread of fire, as well as fire detectors and sprinkler systems. Working with a reputable fire door and sprinkler system company during installation and, in the case of sprinkler systems, investing in annual maintenance can ensure that your premises are robustly protected in the event of the unthinkable.

Well-Signed Emergency Exits

Many commercial property owners view emergency exits as a compliance box to be ticked, but it’s important to remember that exits that are poorly illuminated or difficult to locate can be a significant liability risk. It’s about much more than making sure that the exits are visible; it’s about making sure that they’re visible through a haze of smoke, and from floor level, which is where employees would be looking for the exits in the event of a fire. 

As well as installing quality exit signs, it’s key to periodically check that they still perform well over time. Many managers assume that exit signs last forever, but the truth is that they can and do degrade over time, which means periodically checking their functionality is key. 

Evacuation Planning

Even with the best infrastructure in place, there’s always a risk that an incident will occur. Ensuring that everyone knows what to do before that happens, rather than trying to figure it out while it’s happening, really can make all the difference between a near-miss and disaster.

It’s one thing to plan how an evacuation will function, but another thing for it to actually happen. The safest commercial properties are always the ones that have practiced an evacuation enough times that everyone knows what to do when they’re required.

Indoor Air Quality

Indoor air quality is easy to overlook because it’s invisible, but research is continually showing that working to improve air quality really can have a significant impact both on the employee’s well-being and business productivity.

The danger of poor air quality is that it takes time to develop, at which point businesses can begin to experience increased sick days and complaints from employees that are difficult to find the source of. That’s why testing the air quality from time to time is so vital. It’s a manageable issue — cleaning HVAC filters, adding plants — but only if you’re aware that it exists in the first place.

Onsite Safety Kits 

The vast majority of commercial properties have safety kits on-site. But fully stocked safety kits that everyone knows the location of? They’re much less common. Sometimes, items are removed from kits during an incident and never replaced, which creates a risk in the future. Ensuring that safety kits contain everything they should and are easily located really can make a big difference in the event of an incident. 

Clear Paths

Clutter can be similar to indoor air quality; it worsens over time, but because it’s so gradual, it isn’t always obvious until there’s an issue. Studies have consistently shown that clutter can increase the risk of safety incidents, as well as provide other negative outcomes, such as a decrease in productivity. 

Because clutter can happen naturally and gradually, it’s best to periodically take a walkthrough with clear eyes to make sure that you’re not slowly acquiring a clutter problem. If an excess of items is becoming an issue, then consider renting a storage unit, which can be an effective way to clear a space without having to throw items away.

Safety Audits

Risks change over time. While the above steps will put a commercial property in a strong safety position, it’ll only stay that way if someone is checking the infrastructure and updating safety protocols in line with emerging threats. It’s recommended to periodically check that the property’s safety standards are still at a high level, with many managers finding it best to hire a professional safety audit firm to do the job on their behalf, since they may notice things that you could miss.