Health and Safety Essentials

Available Now: Specialist Health and Safety Advice for SMEs

Are you the owner of a small or medium-sized enterprise?

If so, does your business comply with current health and safety legislation? And do you have a clear, written policy which covers health and safety in the workplace? (A business with five or more employees is legally obliged to provide a written H&S policy statement).

If the answer to the above is ‘no’, or you’re not sure, then you almost certainly need the services of a professional health and safety consultancy, to help you to identify workplace threats and deal with them before they cause you problems.

Businesses of all sizes are throwing vast amounts of money down the drain through not managing their workplace health and safety ‘policies’ cost-effectively. A specialist health and safety consultancy could reduce those losses considerably and help ease the strain on your budget.

In the UK, one person is killed at work every other working day and a further 6000 are injured. In addition, 28.5 million business days were lost due to work-related illnesses last year. A sobering thought . . . particularly if you’re a small business owner.

As a director, or employer, you may think that your liability insurance will protect you in the event of a serious injury to one of your workforce. However, the stark reality is, that insurance policies cover only a fraction of the ‘true’ cost of accidents.

Most policies will not cover:

· Sick pay

· Loss of product and raw materials

· Plant and equipment repairs

· Overtime and temporary labour

· Delays to production

· Investigation time

· Fines

Did you also realise that company directors, business owners and managers can be held responsible for failing to comply with health and safety laws?

Consider for a moment, if the worst were to happen, whether your company or business could stand losses on a potentially massive scale, let alone the damage to your reputation. In the event of such an accident occurring, your systems, procedures and employees would all come under direct scrutiny from health and safety inspectors – and very possibly – the media.

A specialist health and safety consultancy will help you devise a plan for complying with your legal obligations, before they become liabilities. Another benefit of doing so, is that external consultants can also be retained as ‘Competent Advisors’, and as such, be named in your health and safety policy. (The Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 stipulates that all organisations must appoint a ‘Competent Person’ to advise on health and safety matters.)

With your health and safety ‘blueprint’ in place, you’ll be able to monitor standards, carry out health and safety audits, and review policy and performance at regular intervals. Every single one of your staff will know what is required of them and when.

In investing in your employees’ health and safety now, you will be achieving far more than simply complying with current legislation. You’ll be creating a ‘positive health and safety culture’ which will enhance the levels of co-operation and competence in your workforce, as well as improving communication between management and employees.

And that can only be good for business.

For Health and safety in Dartford contact SEE Improvements.