Health & Safety Policy Statements
Business Safety Solutions provide a wide range of health and safety services for a wide range of sectors. One of our most commonly requested services is health and safety policy statements.
As a business, you are legally obligated to have a health and safety policy statement in place if you employ five or more people, according to the Health and Safety At Work Act 1974.
The main purpose of a health and safety policy statement is to outline a clear plan of action that should thoroughly detail your companies approach.
Here at Business Safety Solutions, we provide FREE no-obligation consultations for businesses looking for help regarding health and safety policy statements.
Contact us today by calling us on 01244 455277. Alternatively, use our online contact form.
When you use local and trusted health and safety partners just like BSS, we are able to confidently create your business a robust health and safety policy that will ensure you are fully legally compliant whilst also mapping out safety for all workers and employees.
Once the health and safety policy is designed, it should be easily accessible for all in your workplace so that all managers and employees are singing from the same hymn sheet and working towards the same safety goals.
According to the Health and Safety At Work Act, a comprehensive policy should contain the following sections to be fit-for-purpose;-
Health & Safety Policy (Aims & Objectives)
This is basically your statement of intent where you are responsible for outlining your businesses’ philosophy and values regarding health and safety.
This is fundamentally a commitment to managing health and safety across one or multiple operations at different locations throughout the country.
Within the statement of intent, vague claims should be avoided and more realistic yet achievable aims should be the goal.
A few examples of statements that are positively looked on by managers and employers may include;-
- Ensure that employees have the necessary Personal Protective Equipment to carry out tasks expected alongside adequate health and safety training.
- To regularly review the health and safety policy to check if it can be further improved for the safety of employees.
- To set out clear and concise health and safety targets, and meet them with extra reviews wherever applicable.
- Identify any potential risks or hazards immediately and work to control/minimize them.
Organisation Of Health & Safety
The next part of the document should set out exactly who is responsible with your organization for health and safety roles.
This should follow on from the statement of intent and within the second stage, the document will start to pinpoint names, positions, and duties. This can be very simple within a small business, that may have a maximum of 10 employees, but should be more carefully considered for businesses with 50+ employees.
It’s absolutely integral to ensure that every individual is clear on the responsibilities and duties relating to health and safety. Furthermore, at this stage, it’s also imperative that all employees have a summary of who is responsible for what.
Failure to follow through with this type of compliance may lead to prosecutions.
Health & Safety Arrangements
The final part of the health and safety policy statement will identify the arrangement you have in place to control the risk of health and safety.
This part of the document is where you should get more specific in your approach, systems, and procedures to be implemented that will minimize or reduce health and safety risks.
Health and safety arrangements are the practical sides of the document but you should avoid being long-winded as the goal here is to make sure everyone understands what you are trying to achieve quickly.
Also outlined in the health and safety arrangements section should be how to handle fire emergencies and when and how thorough training will be provided across the spectrum.
