Managing health & safety

‘Successful health and safety management’ (HSG65) has been produced by the HSE and is an excellent guide on how to plan for and audit health and safety and investigate accidents.

It suggests a five-step process to the successful management of health and safety as detailed below.

Step 1 - Set your policy

Your policy is a demonstration to your staff and everyone else that you take health and safety issues seriously, have identified risks associated with your business, have assessed those risks and will continue to eliminate or control them.

There are no precise requirements regarding the contents of such a policy, however typically it should cover the following.

• Purpose and scope
  An example would be: ‘to establish, provide and maintain working conditions that are safe, healthy and conform to appropriate safe systems of work for all employees’.
  
  
• Responsibilities
  Who is responsible for ensuring that all aspects of the policy are carried out including management and employees?
  
  
• Principles
  These will include statements regarding procedures to ensure a safe working environment including assessment, consultation, dangerous substances, training, accident and fire procedures.

Step 2 - Organise your staff

The effectiveness of your policy depends upon the involvement and commitment of your staff and the HSE use four ‘c’s to promote this:

• competence - making sure you provide training and advisory support
• control - ensuring you allocate responsibilities and manage activities
• cooperation - encouraging a team-working culture
• communication - ensuring the policies are regularly communicated to all staff particularly when changes in the legislation have taken place.

Step 3 - Plan and set standards

This involves setting health and safety objectives, identifying hazards, assessing risks and implementing standards of performance. This would include for example looking at work station designs, undertaking regular fire drills, ensuring electric appliances are turned off at the end of each day and installing adequate filing to avoid storing heavy items on the top of cabinets.

Step 4 - Measure your performance

This is about looking at whether your assessments are showing an improvement or the same issues are repeating themselves. Regular inspections and checks should be made to ensure your standards are being met.

Step 5 - Learn from experience

If things have gone wrong, this is about reviewing how effective your procedures are and making changes to improve the effectiveness of your policies and procedures.