15 Feb How To Ensure Your Business Is Following The Latest Health and Safety Guidance
It can be quite a daunting task to run a business and keep on top of all the requirements needed to be compliant with the law. One area that can be particularly tricky and time-consuming is health and safety. Following ever-changing guidance can be hard but here are some tips to ensure a business is well protected and compliant.
Have Somebody Designated To The Job
As a matter of priority, the job of meeting health and safety requirements should be clearly designated to a team member. Depending on the size of the business it is important to consider whether this can be done as part of an existing role or if there is a need to hire someone with this as their sole focus. It will help to consider the risk factor of your business in this.
Provide Staff With Support And Appropriate Training
Looking after the mental wellbeing and safety of staff through training is both a smart business practice in terms of retention and an effective way of always ensuring you are following guidance. Health and safety essentials training for all would foster an idea of togetherness in the approach to safety and ensure there is a consistent approach whatever the size of the company. The courses that iHASCO provide are easy-to-follow, focused on legal requirements and comprehensive. With more information, staff should feel a greater sense of confidence in their environment too.
Risk Assess Your Environment
Under the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999, you are required to identify what could cause injury or illness in your business, decide how likely that is to occur, and take steps to solve or mitigate the issue. The easiest way to follow the law here is to conduct a risk assessment. This element of compliance is about being thorough but is also largely about common sense. Talking to workers to get a sense of what they see as potential risks will help and then you can then develop and implement control measures on this basis. It is important to know that only things you can reasonably be expected to know about are included – which is why communication is paramount.
Create A Policy
Writing an entire policy that covers a company doesn’t need to be as long or complicated as it sounds. Many of these are simply documents that layout all the things you have highlighted in an organised way. Everybody must be aware of the processes for when and how things get done so sharing any updates should be a key part of the health and safety offer’s remit. The details of responsibility being laid out through policy is a way of letting people know what is expected of them with regard to conduct and how they report risks or incidents. It is also a clear sign of a business’ commitment to health and safety.
Round-Up
Preserving the health and safety of customers, employees and the public is really important to a business succeeding. Mitigating risks makes this much easier to achieve and allows the focus to be adequately spent on other areas. Regulations are constantly changing though, and the laws that apply to a business may vary based upon the type of work you’re carrying out, or where. For this reason, you need to stay on top of all relevant legislation and regularly refresh or revisit guidance. When in doubt, do not be afraid to seek professional advice.
About the author
Ella is a professional business writer who specialises in writing for SMEs and sharing her ideas on how they can streamline their processes.
No Comments