The Health and Safety Basics
Health and safety is important, but it needn’t be complicated. By concentrating on several key areas, you can create a safe and healthy workplace.
Each year in the UK, around 200 people are killed in workplace accidents, and more than 3 million people experience a work-related illness or injury – resulting in 28 million working days lost per year. With statistics such as these, it’s easy to see why health and safety should be a key concern for British businesses.
As a business owner, you have a legal responsibility to ensure the health, safety and wellbeing of your employees. However, the world of ‘health and safety’ can seem quite daunting to the uninitiated and it can be difficult to know where to concentrate your efforts. If this sounds familiar, don’t let it prevent you from taking action. We’ve listed eight key areas to concentrate on which will help you to improve health and safety in your organisation.
Risk Assessments
In order to draw up a health and safety policy that works for your business it’s important to first understand where the dangers lay. An effective risk assessment will help you to identify any potential risks to employees’ safety, enabling you to then put in place adequate measures to mitigate those risks. Don’t forget, if you employ more than five people, you will need to record your findings.
Record Keeping
Keeping official records of any workplace accidents or ‘near misses’ in an accident book, for example, will give you a better understanding of the potential hazards within your workplace, enabling you to refine and improve your safety policies as you go along. This is also a legal requirement if your business is over a certain size.
Fire Safety
As part of your overall health and safety strategy, it’s imperative to have a separate fire safety policy. Failure to pay adequate attention to fire safety can have dramatic and tragic consequences for your business, your employees and your customers. A good fire safety policy should include fire prevention methods, emergency evacuation procedures and fire safety instructions and training.
Wellbeing at Work
These days, health and safety at work goes way beyond simply preventing accidents. Staff wellbeing is a hugely important area, and one that is being given increasing attention – after all, happy staff equal healthier and more productive staff. How you approach this is down to your individual business and culture, but perks such as a comfortable break room or on-site gym can be really effective. Why not ask your employees for some ideas?
Information Security
In today’s modern world, the majority of business operations are recorded and stored digitally, so health and safety policies need to go beyond merely safeguarding physical safety. Information security is increasingly important, so create an effective backup procedure and ensure that all your staff are trained on and aware of the importance of data protection.
Safety Signage
Once you have conducted a risk assessment and drawn up a policy, you will need to take practical steps in order to implement the policy on the ground. One of the easiest ways to raise awareness of and improve health and safety in the organisation is through the use of relevant signage. Instructions for the correct use of equipment, construction safety signs, and hazard warning signs, for example, can all help to cut the risk of workplace illness or injury.
Staff Involvement and Training
You can have the best health and safety policy in the world, but in order for it to be effective you need your staff to be on board. The best way to do this is to involve them from the very beginning; consult them and ask for their input when you are first writing the policies – as well as ensuring buy-in, you will also get some good ideas from the people who are working on the ground.
Staff training is also vitally important and should be a key element of any health and safety policy. Health and safety awareness training will help employees to understand how to protect themselves and each other in the workplace, and build a positive health and safety culture. Don’t forget to build health and safety into induction programmes so that new starters are aware of their responsibilities in this area.
Monitoring and Review
Things change, so as with any policy, it’s important to monitor and review your health and safety policy on a regular basis to ensure it is still effective, and identify areas for improvement. It should be a living document rather than one that is filed away on a shelf and forgotten about.
Health and safety is important, but it doesn’t have to be complicated. By paying attention to key areas you can help to create a responsible, safe and healthy workplace.