Health & Safety Management

All employers have a legal duty to protect their staff, visitors and customers from harm and it is important to have clear policies and procedures that provide a safe working environment. It is not difficult to create the right kind of structures and much is just common sense.

The starting point for employers is to Know your Responsibilities. This includes providing suitable handling and protective equipment, procedures for reporting incidents, registering with regulators and local authorities, and providing insurance cover. Do your research here because, if you get it wrong, you could face fines, imprisonment or business closure.

Health and safety now goes much further than just issues of handling, lifting and protective gear. Look Beyond the Basics to things such as fire protection, waste management and recycling, smoking, bullying, lighting and ergonomics (e.g. desks, chairs, computers), hygiene and toilets, disability and access to premises, and work breaks. The list of employer requirements has grown considerably in the last 10 years and many smaller businesses find it difficult to keep up. Although this may seem to be a considerable burden for the business, there can be considerable Benefits for Employers as fit and healthy employees mean lower sickness costs and an enhanced reputation as an employer of first choice.

Employers have a legal duty to document Risk Assessments for the organisation’s normal daily activities. So sit down and think through all of the things that your employees and subcontractors do each day and identify the risks they face. For each risk, write down the safe-working procedure and the risk mitigation that you can provide to reduce or eliminate the risk. Whenever, you ask a member of your staff or a sub-contractor to do something out of the ordinary, remember to brief them on the safe working practice. If you don’t have a safe working procedure for the task, you should carry out a risk assessment before allowing the task to proceed.

In order to get employee buy-in to your health and safety environment, make sure to Encourage Staff to Be Involved using techniques such as ideas boards, safety committees and publishing the number of days since the last accident or injury.

Good health and safety management involves Careful Communications and Continual Training for your staff. This needs commitment and time from senior managers to make sure that the key messages are clearly understood by everyone.

Document your health and safety Policies in Writing, explaining who is responsible for what. Use clear, simple language and make sure that your staff know about, and read, your health and safety policies.  Finally, make sure that your policies are Visible to all Visitors to your premises.

The Health & Safety Executive has a very informative web site at www.hse.gov.uk with a wealth of useful checklists, forms and downloadable booklets.

 You can see an example of our Health and Safety policy at www.4-consulting.com/Policies_HS.htm. 

Sandy Pratt will be happy to talk to you about this article.  You can contact him by email at Sandy.Pratt@4-consulting.com.

Sandy Pratt is a director of 4-consulting, click here to view his profile.