Increasing employee awareness of their health and safety duties

This short guide assumes that you are an employer who gives high priority to health and safety and wants every employee to understand that they too are responsible for the safety of themselves and others.

Health and safety policy

You can regard a health and safety policy as just a legal requirement, something which will cover your back as an employer but can be filed away and forgotten, or you can use it as a management tool.

A policy which is well thought out, detailed and specific to the needs of your business, can have a significant impact on health and safety awareness, provided that it is widely circulated and enforced.

Aim to make your health and safety policy work for you.

Include it in your staff handbook or display it on notice boards.

Make sure all new starters receive a copy.

Review it constantly in line with changes to operations and the working environment.

Issue regular updates to keep the policy alive, relevant and fresh in your employees’ minds.

You’ll find a health and safety policy here

Training

Health and safety should be on the agenda of every induction programme.

All new employees should be made aware of:

• your company’s health and safety rules;
• standards of housekeeping;
• emergency procedures; and
• their responsibility for the health and safety of themselves and others.

Specific, job related health and safety rules should be covered in training sessions and by monitoring and supervision.

Don’t just explain the rules and procedures and expect employees to follow them in blind obedience.

Take time to explain the underlying dangers so that your employees understand the reason why the rules are there.

Check out our health and safety training policy

Discipline

A company’s discipline procedure is the means by which its rules and procedures are enforced.

Your discipline procedure should refer explicitly to health and safety and make it clear that failure to observe health and safety rules is regarded as misconduct and may lead to dismissal.

Apply your rules consistently and fairly.

Don’t turn a blind eye because you need to get an order out quickly or because the employee concerned is indispensable.

If you condone a breach of rules once, you will lose credibility and it will be difficult to enforce the rule at a later date.

Here’s a disciplinary policy

Walk the talk

If you want other people to take responsibility for health and safety, make sure that you do so yourself.

In some workplaces, those who stick to the rules, wear the protective clothing and avoid risks are perceived as over cautious or timid.

If this is the case, change the perception.

Follow the rules yourself and demonstrate by your own actions the paramount importance of health and safety.

Never compromise health and safety by cutting corners, whatever the pressures.

Carry out regular risk assessments and act on your findings.

Make health and safety a regular item on the agenda of your team meetings.

Incorporate the responsibility for health and safety in every job description.

Need To Do

You need to:

• formulate a health and safety policy which is alive and relevant;
• circulate the policy widely and keep it up to date;
• use induction, training and monitoring to reinforce the message;
• focus training on understanding dangers rather than blind obedience to safety rules;
• use your discipline procedure consistently to enforce your rules; and
• make health and safety an integral part of your management role.

For a general overview of health and safety read our health and safety guide