Across Great Britain, the HSE secured a total of 636 convictions, giving a conviction rate of 94%. Local authorities prosecuted 191 offences and secured 184 convictions – a rate of 96%. The HSE’s emphasis is on prevention but they will come down hard on employers who flout the law. Do you know what should you be doing to avoid this happening to you?
10 Top Tips for Health and Safety Success
- Lead by example – demonstrate your commitment and provide direction to let everyone know health and safety is important.
- Write a policy which includes the health and safety responsibilities of all personnel within the organisation and the arrangements for implementing and monitoring it. To make your policy effective, you need to get your staff involved and committed. This contributes towards a positive health and safety culture.
- Make sure your workplace hazards have been identified and the risks have been assessed, eliminated or controlled. Provide information on hazards and risks to your employees and contractors working on your premises.
- Assess the skills that your employees need to carry out their work safely and ensure that all employees – including managers, supervisors and temporary or agency staff – have received the necessary training.
- Ensure that managers and supervisors understand their responsibilities and have the time and resources to carry them out.
- Arrange to have access to competent health and safety advice – you need to know if you are complying with health and safety laws that affect your business. A good adviser will give you practical solutions to health and safety ‘challenges’.
- Set health and safety objectives, where everyone knows what they must do and how they will be held accountable.
- Co-ordinate and co-operate with contractors who work on your premises.
- Measure your health and safety performance by means of regular inspection and checking to ensure your standards are being implemented and management controls are working. You can monitor reactively – by learning from your mistakes – when they have resulted in injuries, illness, damage to property or near misses.
- Monitor and review your performance by carrying out audits to see if your policy, organisation and systems are achieving the right results. Combine the results from measuring performance with information from audits to improve your health and safety management.
It is predicted that more employers will fall foul of the Regulator in 2015 – make sure you’re not one of them.
Contact us if you would like further advice.
