Site Accommodation: How to Care for Your Workers

When it comes to site accommodation, contractors need to provide adequate facilities for all workers. Legal regulations state that workers must have access to toilets and washing facilities. Further, for jobs where protective clothing must be worn, they need changing rooms and storage lockers as well.

Provide More Than the Basics

Therefore, as an employer, you will need to provide more than just the basics. Despite the ease with which employers can set up site accommodation, some do neglect basic requirements from time to time. Simply setting up a chemical toilet and a cold water tap is not enough to adequately care for your workers. Instead, you should be looking to have good facilities. Your intention should be not only to promote good health on the site, but also to add to workplace morale.

It may seem like a lot to organize. However, as long as you take care of everything in the planning phase, there is no reason why your site can’t meet health and safety requirements. To help you achieve that, we’ve put together a guide on how to care for your workers effectively.

Rest Facilities

Good site accommodation should include plenty of rest facilities. Working on outdoor sites, particularly in Britain, means workers are exposed to changing weather conditions. What may start out as a pleasant day may suddenly turn cold and wet. When this happens, workers will need to have a place to go so that they are not left outside in the rain.

The rest facilities you have on site should have plenty of tables, along with seating with backs, for everyone on site. On most jobs, this may mean using a portable canteen unit. The good thing about these units is that they’re entirely flexible. This means you can select a size that best suits the number of workers you have on site.

A Place to Warm Up

To properly care for your workers, you will also have to provide them with a way to heat up their drinks and food. This could be in the form of an electrical heating ring, or you could use a microwave oven.

Plenty of work gets done over the winter months, when temperatures can drop into the low single figures. Therefore, it’s also important that the site accommodation is heated.

Changing Rooms with Lockers

When it comes to giving your workers somewhere to store their personal effects, you will need a separate unit. Although rest accommodation can be sizable, it’s important that there is a separate unit for storing valuables, complete with lockers.

Many jobs require a change of clothes once on site, especially if hazardous materials are being used. Therefore, giving workers a clean and secure place to change and store their belongings is vital. In order to do their best work for you, workers need to be sure that they can store their belongings safely and securely.

It’s also worth bearing in mind that men and women need separate changing facilities. Lockers should be provided for every worker who is likely to need them. Additionally, if there is a risk of protective clothing contaminating workers’ everyday clothing, there should be space to store those items separately.

A Way to Dry Wet Clothing

If the job involves working with water, then contractors need to make provisions to dry their employees’ wet clothing. It’s important to bear in mind that drying methods should not be limited to heaters, as draping clothes over these could be a fire risk. If using heaters for drying clothes is unavoidable, then they should have proper ventilation. Additionally, they should be fitted with high temperature cut-out devices.

Wrapping Up

Ultimately, good site accommodation is about providing your workers spaces to change, dry their clothes, prepare food and rest. At SRP Hire Solutions, we have a wide range of site accommodation solutions. These are available for sites of all sizes. So whatever you need, we’re bound to have something that will work for you. Talk to us today about your site accommodation needs.