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Our strategy involves management workforce partnerships based on trust, respect and co-operation. From this, a culture can evolve, ensuring that health and safety problems are resolved and concerns, ideas and solutions are freely shared and acted upon. To be truly effective, participation must go beyond consultation – employees should also be actively involved in making decisions. Although workplace consultations provide a platform for employers to involve employees, this is not sufficient in the current economic climate and your worker involvement should be linked to your business framework.

Top Tips for Effective Worker Involvement

1. Ensure directors and managers visibly support worker involvement in order to promote a safety culture. Engage personnel at every level of the company and use different approaches for different groups. Don’t forget to include shift workers and part-timers.
2. Ensure managers and safety representatives receive training in communication, e.g. eliciting views, presenting a case, giving feedback, etc. Opportunities for face-to-face dialogue and feedback include: shop floor discussions; toolbox talks; briefing sessions; suggestion schemes, including via the company’s intranet; management meetings; and individual discussions. If they are to be productive, discussions should be broad, as work organisation, changes in working methods, production, technologies and equipment can all affect health and safety.
3. Make sure that health and safety committees have a balance of employee representatives and managers. If safety representatives feel intimidated about speaking out, managers should consider removing themselves from part of the meeting to allow the representative speak freely.
4. Trial an opinion survey and act quickly on suggestions or shortcomings and consider publicising responses. That way, employees will start to accept that you are serious about their involvement. Upon receipt of suggestions, always ensure the person making the suggestion receives feedback – whether good or bad.
5. Include employees when carrying out risk assessments and seek their views about problems and solutions. The more workers actively participate in the assessments, the more effective the control measures are likely to be.
6. Consider setting up a working group to tackle a specific problem. When planning measures to deal with specific hazards, involving those who work on relevant tasks will help ensure that the outcome takes into account their experience.

Act now to involve employees in health and safety if you want to avoid major problems that may result in prosecution and civil action.

Contact us if you require assistance.

Under Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations 1998 (PUWER) employers are required to select and install work equipment properly, ensure its proper use and maintain it to protect those who may be affected by the way in which it is used.

7 Tips for Ensuring Health and Safety is Considered in the Procurement Process

1. Before purchasing new equipment/machinery, you should determine: whether there is a requirement for notification to use the equipment (e.g. Ionising Radiation Regulations 1999); whether risk assessments have been undertaken; and what information, instruction, training and supervision will be required for employees who will be using it.
2. Consult with safety representatives and employees about equipment suitability and general safety requirements prior to purchase.
3. When you specify, hire or buy work equipment, you must ensure that it is appropriate and suitable for purpose, including how and where it is to be used.
4. New machinery should be CE marked, safety checked for faults, errors or missing parts and provided with instructions in English. Work equipment should be marked with appropriate safety signs and texts to give information and warnings where there is a risk to health and safety, although basic hand tools and apparatus are excluded.
5. You should ask the supplier for details of maintenance procedures, maintenance schedules and how to deal with breakdowns, problems, etc. This will ensure that work equipment remains in an efficient state, order and good repair so as not to place users at risk.
6. Ensure spare parts will be supplied or readily available for the expected lifetime of the work equipment.
7. Ensure that second-hand equipment is safe and has the necessary documentation as to safe use, including CE marking. If equipment is being hired from a third party, the hirer (i.e. the person who is offering it for hire) has a duty to ensure it safe for use at the point of hire/loan. However, the duty to ensure safety once in use is the responsibility of the hiree (i.e. the person who will be using the hired equipment).

Considering health and safety should be integral to the procurement of your machinery and equipment.

Where the RRO applies to your premises, you must undertake a fire risk assessment and make an emergency plan, within which you must nominate people to undertake any special roles identified, such as fire wardens/marshals. The number of fire wardens depends on the size and complexity of your premises. Your fire risk assessment or fire emergency plan should give you information on how often you should train fire wardens.

Fire Warden Training: 10 Top Tips

Fire wardens require special training above the needs of the normal employee, which includes knowledge of fire prevention and identification of possible fire hazards in the workplace. Fire wardens not only need to be able to keep a calm head in an emergency, but also need to be able to carry out their role whilst under pressure. Different organisations adopt slightly different procedures for emergency evacuation and therefore will require their wardens to take actions that are tailored to the particular building or organisation.

However, all fire wardens must:

1. Know details of the company’s fire risk assessment, emergency plan and evacuation procedures – actions to be taken in the event of fire.
2. Know the common causes of fire and understanding the fire triangle – fire creation and spread.
3. Understand the role and responsibilities of the fire warden.
4. Know how to raise the alarm and how to call the fire service.
5. Know which means of escape for which they have responsibility.
6. Know how to search areas safely and recognise when it is not safe to enter rooms/areas.
7. Be prepared and trained to use fire fighting equipment if it is safe to do so.
8. Assist the evacuation of people by: donning a high visibility jacket or waistcoat in order to be easily recognised and assisting disabled staff members in accordance with individual PEEPs (Personal Emergency Evacuation Plans).
9. Understand human behaviour in a fire.
10. Liaise with the fire and rescue service on arrival.

Keep your business safe and avoid enforcement action by ensuring your staff are trained properly.

Contact us should you require assistance.

By incorporating the four essential principles – Plan, Do, Check, Act – into your safety management system, you can reduce potentially fatal accidents and expensive costs.

Plan, Do, Check and Act Now to Manage Driving for Work Plan

• Start by consulting workers and carrying out a risk assessment which considers: the vehicles, journeys and any drivers who might increase your overall level of risk.
• From this, identify any priorities for action and keep a record of your findings. Plan for driver emergencies, such as vehicle breakdowns, bad weather, etc.
• Develop a policy on how your company will manage road risk and ensure it is communicated to your workers.

Do

• Consider drivers’ attitudes and competence on recruitment by asking about their driving history and any penalty points they may have.
• Ask to see their original driver’s licence at least annually and keep a copy on file. Ensure they meet the DVLA’s medical fitness standard.
• Consider further driver training, particularly if you employ younger drivers and workers who drive for long distances.
• Make sure vehicles are right for the job and that they are maintained and serviced regularly. Where vehicles are owned by employees, request copies of MOT certificates and maintenance logs and evidence of tax and motor insurance, which includes business use.
• Ensure drivers plan their journeys, following the safest route, and plan breaks from driving at least every two hours. If a journey is excessively long, it’s safer to allow your workers to stay overnight.
• Consider using public transport as this may allow employees to carry on working, e.g. using a laptop when travelling by train.

Check

• Check drivers’ licences to see if drivers are entitled to drive the class of vehicle to be driven.
• Ensure all accidents and near misses are reported, recorded and investigated to monitor trends.
• Develop daily and weekly vehicle safety check lists and ensure they are completed.

Act

• Review your progress periodically to identify if you need to take further steps to manage driver safety and develop an action plan for improvement.
• Remember to share any lessons learned from experience with your workforce to promote safer driving.

Manage your driving activities now if you want to avoid criminal convictions, financial penalties, negative publicity and serious accidents.

Contractors are at particular risk as they may be strangers to your business and thus unfamiliar with your organisation’s policies, procedures, rules, hazards and risks. Even contractors who regularly visit your premises need reminding of their joint health and safety responsibilities.

Top Tips for Managing Contractors

1. Choose contractors who are competent to do the work, e.g. by checking evidence of competence. Look at risk assessments and method statements, decide whether sub-contracting is acceptable and if so, how safety will be ensured.
2. Plan the work and consider eliminating or reducing risks to health and safety, ensure the precautions needed are understood and the job is discussed with the contractor. The aim of planning should be to ensure the work is carried out safely without putting contractors or your own employees’ safety at risk.
3. Manage contractors while they are carrying out work. Check any safety certificates in relation to certain machinery, e.g. six- or 12-monthly checks for lifting equipment. Ensure site rules are being followed, the job is being done safely and when work is completed, the site is left in a safe condition. Give workplace-specific inductions, highlight the known hazards, make sure that contractors sign in and out and name a person as a point of contact to liaise with, report problems and answer any queries.
4. Review the contractor once the work is completed to decide whether your system for managing contractors should be revised in the light of experience. This will include consideration of how effective your planning was, how the contractor performed, how effective the communication, supervision/monitoring systems worked or whether any improvements are needed to manage contractors in future.
5. Ensure those with responsibilities for managing/working with contractors have enough knowledge, skills and experience (i.e. competence) to carry out their responsibilities effectively. This will involve providing training and information on the hazards and precautions for the work undertaken.
6. Consider how you will deal with contracting firms or their individual employees who fail to work in a safe manner (e.g. removal from approved lists, loss of contract, financial penalties). This information should be made available to contractors.

Ensure that contractors are fully integrated into your company’s health and safety management system,  avoiding costly prosecutions.

Contact us if you require information and assistance.