FAQ

By law, you must put in place arrangements to manage, control, and maintain health and safety at work. If you don’t do this, you could be prosecuted. If found guilty, you could be fined heavily or, in the worst case, imprisoned.

When you implement a health and safety policy, and then maintain up-to-date health and safety practices in your workplace, you will not only be meeting your legal obligations, but also benefit from:

• Better workplace morale
• Lower numbers of workplace accidents, leading to lower absenteeism
• Reduced potential for injury claims
• Higher productivity
• Lower insurance premiums

As an employer or a self-employed person, you are responsible for health and safety in your business. You may delegate this task, but you retain responsibility. You will need to make sure that whoever does the risk assessment:

•  Is competent to do so
• Involves your workers in the process
• Understands when specialist help might be needed

The law says that lone workers must not be put at more risk than others. Therefore, before allowing people to work on their own, you should carry out a risk assessment, consider training requirements, and ensure that the person is competent to work alone. Additionally, you may need to provide systems to keep in contact with them.

This depends on the size and complexity of your business. However, there must be someone leading health and safety issues.

The most common accidents in the workplace are trips, slips, falls, and manual lifting. You are legally obliged to identify workplace hazards and to inform employees about the safety measures you have put in place.

The law says that you must provide health and safety information, instruction, training, and supervision necessary to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, the health and safety at work of your employees. You should assess your needs and whether training is necessary. In most cases, at least some training will be needed – whether delivered by supervisors or in a group setting.

H&S consultancy services provide experienced, professional, and impartial advice as to your health and safety needs. In larger firms, this impartiality helps to break barriers caused by cultural bias. Small and medium-sized firms benefit from the same expertise at a fraction of the cost of hiring permanent health and safety professionals.

The UK’s health and safety laws and regulations are among the most advanced in the world. They cover every aspect of the workplace, including physical and mental issues that may occur.

When developing your health and safety policy, you must consider hazards (physical and mental), roles, responsibilities, and how you will manage health and safety in the workplace.

The Health and Safety Executive recommends that your health and safety policy is structured in three parts:

1. General statement on health and safety at work – your H&S mission statement
2. Responsibilities ­– who is responsible for what
3. Arrangements – how health and safety will be managed and put into practice

Yes. It’s a legal requirement to either display the Health and Safety Information for Employees Regulations 1989 approved law poster, or give your employees the equivalent leaflet.

You should also display your health and safety policy statement and certificate of employees’ liability insurance on a staff notice board.

You may have to display other relevant health and safety information as required – for example, hazard warning signs.

You must provide health and safety training as part of the employee induction process. In addition, H&S training that is job specific must be provided and refreshed every three years at the minimum. If you have nominated health and safety employees, they must also be trained in their roles (for example, first aiders, fire marshals, risk assessors, etc.)

We offer bespoke health and safety consultancy services, tailored to your organisation’s needs. These may be simple or complex. You may have a handful of employees or hundreds of people on multiple sites. Your employees may work with hazardous materials, at height, or on their own.

It is impossible to provide a blanket level of cost, because every organisation is different and has different needs. For a confidential and non-obligatory discussion about our health and safety consultation services, contact Integral Safety Management now.