As An Employer What Are My Health and Safety Responsibilities?

Many people read the words “health and safety” and immediately balk, but when you’re an employer you need to face the task of health and safety in your workplace head on.

It will not only benefit your company in the long run but you can prevent staff injuries and keep moral high by letting your staff know that the company they work for actually cares about them. No one wants to work in a death trap.

Create a Safety Policy

The first thing to do is to create a policy. This should provide details and also inform your staff of the health and safety measures in place. It should instruct them of your obligations as well as theirs to ensure that the safety of everyone in the premises is taken care of. Whether this is in relation to fire drills or where the first aid box is, it should be a universal health and safety policy so that the needs of all are met.

Describe Safety Risks

As part of this process you need to inform them of the risks which face them in day to day working, this should also include ways in which they are protected from the risks, what they should do to avoid them and how to proceed if an incident does occur on site.

Consult your Staff

In this process, and in an ongoing capacity, you should consult your staff on health and safety issues. They will ideally be able to raise issues which they have seen in day to day work, that you might not have seen or considered. By including staff in the process you make them valued and you shine a light on the importance of their own safety.

Appoint a Responsible Person

Appoint someone to be in charge of the health and safety on your site. Whoever this person is, they must be knowledgeable and effective in this capacity, making recommendations, filling the holes in the policy and ensuring that the people who need training are given it. This person can be you or anyone you choose, but if they are not qualified then the health and safety of everyone on your site will be at risk.

Adequate Training

Finally the most important part of your job as an employer is to make sure that you offer adequate training. Without this, you cannot enforce policies, if your forklift drivers have never been trained you put people at risk, if your first aider has no training then you put people at risk, if your health and safety officer has no training you put people at risk…the list goes on.

Simply put, without any kind of training in the right areas your staff won’t be aware of the dangers and won’t know how best to perform their job without injuring themselves or others.

Here at Euro 1 Training we offer health and safety training as part of our courses for forklift training and lorry training in Rotherham and Doncaster, for anyone seeking to improve the health and safety of their staff. Contact our team today for more information.