Practicing good health and safety is of paramount importance at all times for your business and it is vital that all staff receive adequate instructions and training in order to reduce the risk of an accident or injury occurring.
You are no doubt committed to looking after your employees but it is sometimes a daunting task to actually set about creating a health and safety policy that is able to cover most eventualities.
The basics
The first thing to point out is that if you run a UK business with fewer than five employees, you are not currently required to actually write down your health and safety policy.
You will no doubt still want to demonstrate your commitment to looking after the safety of your staff and this means providing adequate safety training if equipment is being used and completing a risk assessment where necessary.
Specialist equipment suppliers like APL Aerial Platforms for example, provide training where needed for anyone using the platforms supplied.
Your basic aim should be to arrange training or instruction for any employees using equipment or handling potentially hazardous materials as part of their duties. Even if legislation does not make it a requirement, you may still want to create a basic health and safety policy document for your business.
Controlling risk
One of the fundamental purposes of creating a health and safety policy is to manage and control risk.
There can often be a negative reaction to the mention of risk assessment and despite certain perceptions, risk assessment is not about generating reams of paperwork but is meant to be used as a way of identifying sensible measures you can introduce into the workplace to control the potential risks.
Your business should work on the basis that in principle the law, according to HSE, is on your side, in that it does not expect you to be able to remove all risks but instead, identify and introduce practical measures that help to reduce the chances of an accident or injury.
Many businesses are considered to be low-risk, so controlling risk should be relatively easy to do, but in all cases, you simply need to walk around your premises and write down all of the things you see that could be a potential hazard.
Again, HSE guidelines advise that you do not have to write down risk assessment notes or guidelines if you have fewer than five employees in your business, but it does make sense to write down the main points for your own guidance and peace of mind, even if you not actually required to do so.
Creating the document
Although you must adopt a health and safety policy within your business but don’t have to write it down if you have less than 5 people working for you, many business owners choose to create a basic health and safety document.
This document should ideally have three sections. The first section should be a statement of your general policy on health and safety. The next section should cover who you consider is responsible for specific actions and thirdly, set out what measures you intend to put into practice in order to achieve compliance of your health a safety policy.
Creating a simple health and safety policy for your business is a sound idea and it could help protect one of your employees from being involved in an accident at work.
Robert James works in a senior role as a safety training executive. He likes to share his thoughts and insights with an online audience and has already posted on a number of relevant websites.
