Health And Safety: Responsibilities As An Employer

Jun 17, 2021

You have finally realised your dream of running you own business. This is an exciting time, but along your journey you have come across terms like ‘Health & Safety’, ‘Duty of Care’, ‘Responsible Person’, and ‘Risk Assessments’.

Legal Requirements

Under health and safety law it is your responsibility as an employer to protect the health, safety and welfare of your employees and others (customers and contractors) who might be affected by your business. This is often referred to as an employer’s ‘Duty of Care’. But how do you fulfil these important legal requirements?

Competent Person

The first step would be to appoint a competent person. A competent person should have the skills, knowledge and experience to be able to recognise hazards in your business and help you put sensible controls in place to protect workers and others from harm.

Who can you appoint?

You could appoint (one or a combination of):

  • Yourself
  • One or more of your workers
  • Someone from outside your business

Health And Safety Policy

Now that a competent person or persons has been appointed you must now write a policy for managing health and safety in your business.

A health and safety policy sets out your general approach to health and safety. It explains how you, as an employer, will manage health and safety in your business. It should clearly say who does what, when and how.

If you have five or more employees, you must write your policy down. If you have fewer than five employees you do not have to write anything down, but it is useful to do so.

Workplace Risk Assessments

As an employer, you’re required by law to protect your employees, and others, from harm.

Under the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999, the minimum you must do is:

  • Identify what could cause injury or illness in your business (hazards)
  • Decide how likely it is that someone could be harmed and how seriously (the risk)
  • Take action to eliminate the hazard, or if this isn’t possible, control the risk

Workplace risk assessments need to be written down, significant findings recorded and reviewed on a regular basis to ensure they remain suitable and sufficient.

Training And Information

Everyone who works for you needs to know how to work safely and without risk to their health.

You must give your workers clear instructions and information, as well as provide adequate training that covers the specific needs of the business and employees.

The information and training should be easy to understand. Everyone working for you should know what they are expected to do.

Safety Aide Are Here To Help

At Safety Aide, we specialise in providing bespoke health and safety consultancy services for businesses. Our fully qualified staff can create a unique health and safety solution for your business, so you can fulfil your legal responsibilities and ensure your staff are working in a safe and secure environment.

How we can help:

  • Competent Person – As our name suggests we act as a personnel assistant to your competent person, offering a year-round assistant and advice on all health and safety matters.
  • Health and Safety Policy – After gaining a full understanding of your business and work processes we will write a policy for you to cater for your specific needs and management structure.
  • Workplace Risk Assessments – one of our fully qualified consultants will carry out a site visit. As the major hazards and risks will be identified and advice on reasonable control measures will be given. A risk assessment will be completed on all pieces of work equipment, hazardous substances, and current management procedure. recorded in individual risk assessment complete their workplace risk assessment
  • Information – We will complete safe working practices also known as method statements on all your main work activities and put these into an easy-to-read employee handbook which can be distributed to all members of staff.
  • Training – we provide tailored e-learning solutions for all your health and safety training requirements. These ROSPA accredited training courses are accessed and managed via a web portal and certificates can be produced for every course.

We are here to help with your responsibilities as an employer.

Call us today on 0808 196 5249.

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Image source: Unsplash