Having an effective health and safety management system for your business not only demonstrates your commitment to the wellbeing of your employees and customers but can also help you improve your business processes and lead to greater efficiency and profitability. In this blog, we explore five key factors you need to improve your organisation’s health and safety performance.
Leadership
For a business to have a robust and effective approach to health and safety, it must be treated as a priority by the management team. This includes incorporating it into top level business plans as well as the day-to-day company activities. If your organisation is large or you work in an industry like construction, where there are additional health and safety requirements, it may be advisable to assign a team to take the lead on ensuring you are meeting your regulatory requirements.
Employee engagement
Creating a top tier health and safety culture at work requires every employee to play their part. One of the roles of the leadership team is to inspire employees to be dedicated to ensuring a safe and healthy workplace. Your staff know their roles and the risks they face better than anyone, which means you won’t be able to effectively mitigate them without their full cooperation. Their on-the-ground expertise can also help you identify solutions to problems that you may not have thought of.
Training
Encouraging your employees to get involved in the creation of and take ownership of plans and procedures makes it more likely they will want to follow them. They should also undertake regular training to stay up to date with the latest safety guidance in their field of work. ESS offers a series of nationally-recognised online training courses in health and safety, covering everything from general safety signs to how to operate specific machinery and equipment.
Assessment
With the right leadership and employee engagement in place, its time to develop a structure and the supporting policies, plans and processes you need to hold your business accountable. This can be time consuming, and it is difficult to know where to start, which is where working towards an accreditation can help guide you. ISO 45001 is the international standard for occupational health and safety management and will provide your business with a structured framework. Holding ISO certification demonstrates your company’s commitment to health and safety and will assist with your compliance and legal requirements.
Review and monitoring
Once you have a Health and Safety Management system in place, the work isn’t over. For it to remain effective, plans and processes should be maintained, regularly reviewed and adapted when new risks come to light. If you hold ISO 45001 certification you’ll be subject to an annual audit to ensure your systems are up to date and the business is continually improving.
At Elevating Safety Solutions our HSE experts can help your business on its journey to better health and safety management. Find out how we can take the stress out of achieving ISO 45001 here. Take a look at our range of online training courses for your staff here.
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