I am writing about employee safety, which can be defined as the indefeasible right of any employee and the responsibility of any employer. Employee safety is the issue that cannot be overestimated. Once the employee safety is out offhand, the most deplorable consequences can follow, which is why the issue is worth serious consideration.
To illustrate the importance of the issue better, I would like to describe the situation which occurred at the company known as the Beck Consulting Co. According to the company policy, those employees who leave the building last are supposed to lock the door to the office before leaving the building.
Working late at Friday night, I was the last one to leave the building on August, 17, 2012. As I was about to go out of the office and lock it, I dropped the key in the corridor. When I was going out in the corridor to pick the key, a gust of wind blew, shutting the door and leaving me the room with no key and the door shut tight. I had to stay in the office whole night long until employees came in the morning and released me.
In the given situation, an obvious negligence of the employee safety rules can be observed. To start with, I have to admit that there was a fault of mine as well.
According to the logics of the employee safety issue, I was not supposed to stay late at work. However, to my credit, I must add that whether I finished the project on time had great significance for the company. Thus, a delay in some 20 minutes was crucial for both me and the company I was working part-time for. On the other hand, the drawbacks of the company policy are obvious in the given situation, too.
To start with, it has not been stated in the company rules that all employees must leave the office at certain time; otherwise, the given situation would not have taken place. In addition, it is more than reasonable that there was a person who would be responsible for checking the office in the nighttime, e.g., an assistant or a night watch. With no one to assist and to watch over the office in the bight, the chances for an accident to happen are quite high.
Therefore, I would recommend Beck Consulting Co. to reconsider their employee safety policy and to make sure that no one is going to be left alone in the nighttime in case of an accident. The given problem can be prevented in several ways. As I have already stated above, the two most obvious means of solving the problem are either making it obligatory for all employees to leave the company office at certain time, which raises the chances that there will be someone to assist the person who locks the door to the office.
However, taking into account the human factor, I must admit that the given solution is flawed as well. The second way to solve the issue is to establish the time at which all employees must leave the office. Thus, no one is going to stay overnight working on a project and the deplorable situations like the one described are not going to happen. However, the suggested solution only minimizes the chances for the incident to happen, yet does not prevent it. Therefore, the best way to solve the problem will be to hire a person who will watch the office in the night.