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Today is the start of Health and Safety Week 2014, which has been launched by the HSE and other partners to highlight certain aspects of health and safety in the workplace – with health and safety leadership being one of the drivers for debate and action. There is an important difference between health and safety leadership and health and safety management – the former is strategic while the latter operational. But what is effective health and safety leadership, and just how should you lead?

Ensure Your Leadership Skills are Robust and Effective

Robust health and safety leadership is fundamental to successful health and safety management. Since the introduction of the Corporate Manslaughter offence in 2007, the spotlight has focused on the responsibilities of directors and senior managers within organisations. As an employer, you should develop effective leadership strategies if you are to avoid prosecution.

4 Top Tips for Effective Health and Safety Leadership

1. Plan your direction: devise a robust and dynamic health and safety policy which sets out your performance standards and values, and ensure that the duties and responsibilities for health and safety management are communicated throughout the company. Don’t forget to consider the safety arrangements of partners, suppliers and contractors, as their performance could adversely affect yours.
2. Establish clear roles and assign responsibilities and accountabilities for individuals and teams. Those in leadership roles must lead by example, by proactively communicating the importance of health and safety throughout your organisation, being active and visible in the workplace and encouraging safe behaviours. Ensure your workers understand the role they play in your company’s safety.
3. Check that you are delivering on health and safety: focus on introducing risk management systems which enable the delivery of risk management and risk reduction strategies. Ensure health and safety is adequately resourced; obtain health and safety advice from a competent person, carry out risk assessments and implement control measures in consultation with your workforce. This will make staff feel valued and increase the likelihood of achieving compliance with policies and safe systems of work.
4. Monitor and review your performance at least once a year: carry out periodic audits of the effectiveness of management structures and risk management controls. Ensure appropriate weight is given to reporting information such as progress of training and maintenance programmes and incident data, e.g. accidents and sickness absence rates. In terms of accidents, your goals and responsibilities should focus on the systems and activities that drive safety outcomes, as opposed to the outcomes themselves.

Failure to include health and safety as a business risk can have catastrophic results. Act now to take the lead on health and safety to avoid costly prosecutions and fines.

Contact us if you would like advice.

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.