Health & Safety Basic Awareness

9 years ago

Health & Safety Basic Awareness

Employers have a legal responsibility to keep their employees safe and to provide guidance to staff on how to make sure they stay safe in their day to day jobs. The best way to do this is to ensure all your managers and employees understand the basics of workplace health & safety.

Park City’s Health & Safety Basic Awareness Training Course can do just this: in one day we can teach you all the essentials of working safely, identifying and addressing risks and how to change your working habits to help you stay safe and compliant.

Health & Safety basics

Your approach to health & safety should be proportionate to the size and nature of your business, but even small companies have minimum requirements which, if not met, can lead to serious consequences – prosecution, fines, potential imprisonment and damage to brand reputation

Your legal requirements

At the very least you need to make sure that you comply with current regulations. You should:

Provide a written health & safety policy (for businesses with 5 or more people);
Assess any risks to employees, customers and any other people who may be affected by day-to-day operations;
Plan, monitor and review protective measures;
Communicate and consult with employees about the risks involved in their work and make them aware of health & safety policies and procedures.

Appoint a “responsible person” to manage your health & safety

It is essential to have a competent person responsible for your business’s health and safety. It could be yourself, a line manager or any other employee – but you need to ensure the individual has the relevant knowledge, training and understanding of what is required. If you’re a small business, you may find that no one has the skills that the position demands and it might be more efficient to outsource your health & safety to a specialist consultant. You may also find this useful if your business operates in a higher-risk environment.

Other Key Requirements

As a quick guide, here are some of the other key points you need to address to ensure your health & safety management is effective and compliant:

Write a health & safety policy – A written health and safety policy is only required if you have five or more employees. However, regardless of the size of the company, it is a way of communicating both your commitment and legal obligations to your staff. It should clearly define who is responsible, what is required and how health & safety is managed within the business.

Assess the risks – It is impractical to expect all risks to be completely removed from the workplace, but you need to ensure there are adequate controls to identify and reduce risks to employees and members of the public. Depending on the nature of your business, you may see yourself as low-risk, but undertaking a risk assessment relevant to your activities will help bring to light any areas that you may not have previously considered.

Provide training and information to staff – Your employees need to know how to undertake their roles safely and know what risks they may encounter which can be covered with the right information and training. A specialist training advisor will be able to help you make the right judgement call when it comes to skills training and help you keep up-to-date records of what has been covered and what still needs to be addressed.
Report to the authorities – Under the Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrence Regulations (RIDDOR), you must report certain injuries, incidents and cases of work-related disease to the HSE. Keeping records will help you to identify patterns of accidents and injuries, and will help when completing your risk assessment.

Keep up to date – Once you’ve got your health & safety management in order, it’s important to make sure you periodically review your policies and procedures taking into account any new legislation. You may need to undertake further risk assessments or provide more specialist training taking into account any changes to your business activities or the work your employees are undertaking.

How Park City can help

Health & safety responsibilities can sometimes feel a bit overwhelming, a drain on your resources and an unnecessary “red tape” burden. But Park City can help you promptly with our Health & Safety services to put your safety management in order: