Health and safety obligations explained

This Guide is designed to provide you with general information around your general health and safety responsibilities as an employer.

The moment you employ someone else, you have to conform to a range of health and safety regulations, this Guide is designed to provide you with general information around your responsibilities as an employer.

The Health and Safety at Work Act (1974) places a duty of care on the employer to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, the health and safety of all employees while they are at work. This also extends to others such as contractors, visitors and the general public who may be affected by the employers operations.

Requirements for employers include:

• Provision and maintenance of a safe workplace and safe means of access and exit
• Provision and maintenance of safe equipment and a safe system of work
• Provision of adequate instruction, training, supervision and information
• Safe arrangements for storage, transport, handling and use of articles and substance
• Provision for the appointment of safety representatives and, where requested, a safety committee
• Provision of a written safety policy (where there are five or more employees)

Furthermore the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations (1992) place additional obligations on employers to implement adequate policies and procedures to ensure that risks to employees and others are minimised. These regulations require employers to:

• Where necessary have proper emergency procedures in place
• Provide health surveillance where there are potential risks to employees' health and take into account capabilities when assigning tasks
• Co-operate in health and safety matters with others sharing the workplace

Provide information on identified hazards and controls to employees and others as appropriate and ensure adequate training and instruction

Fundamental to instituting all the above obligations, and underpinning the employer's management of health and safety, is the requirement to undertake a risk assessment of work premises and operations.

This consists of:

• Where necessary have proper emergency procedures in place
• Provide health surveillance where there are potential risks to employees' health and take into account capabilities when assigning tasks
• Co-operate in health and safety matters with others sharing the workplace
• Provide information on identified hazards and controls to employees and others as appropriate and ensure adequate training and instruction

Fundamental to instituting all the above obligations, and underpinning the employer's management of health and safety, is the requirement to undertake a risk assessment of work premises and operations.

This consists of:

• Assessing the workplace for potential hazards and deciding who might be at risk
• Evaluating any risks and determining whether further safeguards are required
• Recording the findings
• Putting into place such arrangements as are necessary to ensure effective planning, organisation, control, monitoring and review of the preventative measures identified as a result of the assessment

Further information on risk assessment can be found on the Health and Safety Executive website.

Arrangements for management for health and safety

A business' written Health and Safety Policy should give an unequivocal commitment to health and safety from top management and outline the various levels of responsibility for health and safety from senior management down to individual employees.

It should clearly outline how the organisation will ensure employees are aware of their responsibilities and the arrangements for turning the results of the risk assessment process into action plans for implementation. The policy should also outline how the health and safety management arrangements will be audited.

The health and safety audit

The Health and Safety Audit is a way of measuring the performance of an organisation's health and safety management systems. It consists of a systematic and thorough programme of inspections and checks carried out at regular intervals.

The audit will generally be a review of:

• Effectiveness of the organisation outlined in the Health and Safety Policy
• Departmental guidelines and standards developed as a result of the risk assessment process
• Relevant regulations and legal obligations relating to the workplace to ensure they are being met
• Staff attitudes to their own and others' health and safety
• Effectiveness of staff instruction and training
• Actual working practices to ensure safe systems of work are in place and are properly utilised
• Contingency plans
• Recording and provision of information about accidents and hazards

Before you carry out a Health and Safety Audit you will need to do a number of things:

Plan the scope and frequency of the audits

In small, non-complex organisations, where there is likely to be minimal health and safety risk, there may only be a need for a simple audit held once a year.

However, in larger more complex organisations the audit plan may need to be more sophisticated and individual audits held more frequently. The organisation might decide that the scope of the audit should involve one or several of the following:

• Investigation of how well health and safety practices compare with the stated aims, objectives and actions for implementation as outlined in the safety policy and associated documents (e.g. departmental guidelines) across the whole area of operations.
• Focus on one particular activity or process across the whole area of operations.
• Consideration of how well the organisation complies with one specific health and safety obligation across the whole or a specific part of the organisation

Consult with employee representatives

Employers have a legal obligation to consult with their employees (even in a non-unionised workplace) on health and safety matters. Part of this process should involve discussing and agreeing the audit plan with staff or their representatives, and their involvement in assisting the auditors or even becoming auditors themselves.

Determine the audit methodology

There are several possibilities which could be explored when deciding on appropriate methodology:

• Develop an in-house system with bespoke audit checklists and internal auditors drawn from managers and staff. This has the benefit of being highly specific to the organisation and should meet its audit needs fairly precisely. However the organisation may not have the time, resources or expertise available to undertake this
• Buy in a proprietary system, often software based, which can be adapted. This is likely to be quicker than developing in-house systems but may be comparatively expensive in terms of capital outlay.
• Employ appropriate health and safety/risk management consultants to design and implement a system for you. This has all the benefits of a bespoke system but is easily the most expensive option.

Select and train auditors

Regardless of the methodology chosen, it will generally be necessary to select auditors from company managers, supervisors, health and safety representatives and, where appropriate, shop-floor employees. These individuals should be experienced in auditing of other work operations and therefore able to pick up on any health and safety issues fairly readily. Training will need to be delivered on the audit system and on ensuring consistency in its application.

Implement the audit

Generally speaking, it is often better to pair or team up auditors and allocate them to an area where they would not normally work. However, it can also be effective to ask department managers to audit and report on their own department; this can help to focus their mind on key health and safety issues.

The audit should be an open process and staff should be aware of the auditors coming and what they will be doing. However the auditors may wish to build in an element of spot checking or random sampling to cover specific problems such as inadequate use of protective clothing, machine guards etc.

Take action on the outcome of the audit

Once completed the results of the audit should be collated and the following actions taken:

• Immediate remedial action instigated for urgent health and safety breaches
• Information on particular areas of concern should be communicated to the department manager for action
• A report should be prepared for senior management, safety/employee representatives and the Safety Committee on the findings of the audit. This should also compare the results of previous audits and highlight areas of improvement or deterioration
• The ongoing arrangements for the management of health and safety in the organisation as outlined in the Health and Safety Policy should also be reviewed in light of the audit outcomes to ensure these remain effective

The audit process can be a very effective way of monitoring health and safety within an organisation and if used properly can lead to a cycle of continuous improvement. However it is important that the ongoing responsibility that everyone throughout the organisation has for health and safety is not weakened by a tendency to leave taking action until the next audit comes around.

Your health and safety obligations includes to create:

• A guide to health and safety policy
• Procedure notes for compliance and carrying out a risk assessment
• Flow diagrams for a risk assessment and responsibilities