20 Apr Maintaining good Health and Safety Practices

If you are operating a business in the UK, then you are obliged to take care of your workers and your customers by providing safe working conditions for anyone who might come into your business. Businesses are legally obliged to follow strict health and safety guidelines, and they are also expected to make note of any accidents and problems with their health and safety, which will be kept up to date by a designated health and safety officer. By understanding the basic rules, and sticking to government guidelines, you can help your business to maintain good practices.

Create a health and safety policy

One of the requirements of any good business owner is to create a health and safety policy. This is not a single statement, but should be a dossier of all the specific health and safety requirements for each part of your business.  It will include written rules about how the health and safety should be followed. You should be able to describe how health and safety will be managed and have a policy stating that all members of staff need to be taught and must follow, your health and safety policy.  This includes keeping them up to date with any changes.

Managing risks

When you create the policy, you will need to designate a member of staff as the health and safety officer. They will implement the policies in your company and be responsible for assessing and managing risks within the business. Risk management means identifying hazards where staff members are exposed to risk of injury or harm and making sure that there are rules in place to manage that risk.  You will also need to ensure that any risks are minimised as much as possible. Part of managing the risks will be the provision of training in handling machinery or tools, and supply of protective gear where this is necessary.