Health & Safety Assessments - Not just a one off.

"It takes leadership to improve safety.” – Jackie Stewart

The health and safety of a business is vital as it ensures the wellbeing of employees and customers. It may seem tedious to have to undertake regular assessments and audits, but what you are investing in time, you will be rewarded with knowing you are really looking after your team and clients. So why should your business conduct regular health and safety assessments?

Things are always changing within business…

New regulations or ways of working are constantly coming into play. This means that you need to keep on top of these changes and assess if they impact working conditions, or the health of your employees! For example, the pandemic changed where employees were working, suddenly there was a mixture of home workers and those still in work. New guidance came about on working from home by ensuring that employees had regular breaks from computer screens to try and reduce the risk of headaches, backaches and other strains that working from home could cause. Whereas those continuing to work outside of the home had to ensure they had the right PPE for the job. This is just one recent example of changes within businesses and how they can impact the health and safety of employees. Therefore, each time there is a change in the working environment, or regulations, businesses should check their health and safety procedures and also conduct a risk assessment.

What about risk assessments?

These should be carried out for each activity a business does. Although this may seem like a headache, you will be covering your back. If an incident is to occur within your workplace, you could be subject to a fine, legal fees, replacement of staff, sick pay and compensation. Although the forms may be tedious, the alternative could be far worse and costly!

What other instances require a new risk assessment?

As mentioned above, the workplace setting is always changing, but in particular, these scenarios will need to bring about a fresh risk assessment;

When management have been alerted to a health and safety risk. This could be down to seeing an increase in the number of sicknesses and absences within the team, employee complaints about stress and bullying, or an accident within the workplace. These would all alert you to a higher factor of risk.

If an employee has been away for a long period of time. For example, after being furloughed for a long amount of time, there should be a new risk assessment and management should ensure the employee has a refresher on the workplace health and safety regulations.

New employees should also be trained up on safe working practises. An assessment should take place if there is a high intake of new staff.

If an employee is pregnant or breast feeding. Regulation 16, Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 requires employees to undergo a risk assessment to ensure that there are no risks posed to the unborn child, or child.

What about your health and safety policies?

Just as you should be regularly providing a health and safety audit and risk assessments for your workplace, you should also frequently update your health and safety policies.

If you would like to find out more about health and safety policies, audits and risk assessments; such as guidance on how to conduct these or for up to date legalities, then please do contact us.