Why Health and Safety should be top of your agenda in the workplace

As an employer, it is a legal requirement for you to have access to competent health and safety advice – FACT.

But when it comes to Health and Safety, what defines competence?

There is a selection of guidance and best-practice advice available that will provide a list of traits for what constitutes competence. However, it is essentially marked as an individual who has sufficient training, experience, knowledge or ‘other qualities’ within a particular field of expertise, for example, health and safety.

To assist you in identifying if you have a competent individual in your organisation, it is recommended that you ask yourself the following questions:

• Has the person received relevant and applicable training – for example an approved accredited qualification through IOSH, NEBOSH, NCRQ or equivalent?
• Does the individual have a detailed level of practical knowledge?
• Does an individual have the appropriate skills that they need to develop effective solutions to problems?
• Do they have a sufficient level of practical experience?
• Are they familiar with the business? For example, if work individuals are lone working, they must be knowledgeable about lone working policies and procedures.
• Do they have the awareness to identify potential hazards before they become incidents?
• Have they been given authority to correct any potential hazards before they escalate?

Next actions to take

If have asked yourself these questions and have identified that your organisation has a gap, you have two options that you can take to move forward.

1. Employers should look to appoint one or more of their internal employees to provide the health and safety assistance that is required; or

2. If there are no relevant competent workers available or if the level of competence is insufficient to assist you as the employer in complying with health and safety law, you should look at enlisting an external service or person. 

What should your competent person do?

Every organisation is required to comply with relevant health and safety legislation. You can read about the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 here. It is a legal responsibility that cannot be passed on to anyone else, however, it is important to note that your competent person will have a degree of liability.

The role that your competent person should play is to assist you in making sure you are complying with your legal obligations, through their knowledge, understanding and expertise. In a consultancy role, this could mean that a dedicated consultant is assigned to your business and will conduct periodic visits and carry out workplace inspections. Your competent person should also be on hand to provide support whenever you need it, for instance by phone or email.

So now you understand the role of the competent person, why should Health and Safety be the top of theirs and your agenda?

Being safe in your workplace should be a given fact, right? Wrong!

Despite organisations having a legal duty to put suitable arrangements in place to manage health and safety in the workplace, we come across many social housing providers who do not have the required systems to ensure compliance with the latest health and safety requirements and, importantly provide assurance that their people are safe. This means workers are frequently being subjected to unnecessary risk every day.

In 2019, a housing association was ordered to pay £20,000 after it failed to protect its workers from hand-arm vibration syndrome (HAVS). The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) said the organisation failed to adequately assess the risks to its staff from using vibrating tools, did not provide them with proper information or training, and did not undertake suitable and sufficient risk assessments. This could have been easily prevented through proper health and safety management. Can you afford the consequences of failing to meet the HSE’s standards?

The consequences of neglecting occupational health and safety in the workplace are significant:

• Employee and resident safety risks.
• Criminal proceedings.
• Regulatory downgrades.

The latest publication of the Social Housing Barometer found that 49% of housing associations identify health and safety as a top-five risk. This means that over half of housing associations are not aware of the importance of prioritising health and safety management. The regulator’s most recent sector risk profile supported this fact after it identified health and safety as increasing in importance for all housing providers and noted that boards need to understand and prioritise the specific issues, they face concerning this.

We believe occupational health and safety (employee and workplace safety) is a relatively unknown risk to providers, as it is not governed or managed with the same level of scrutiny as property compliance and tenant safety.

Our health and safety consultants can undertake an in-depth review and assessment of your health and safety arrangements to ensure they are in line with HSG65 - guidance which explains the Plan, Do Check, Act approach and shows how it can help you achieve a balance between the systems and behavioural aspects of health and safety management.

Our analysis will investigate and evidence how well your organisation is meeting the requirements by assessing your:

• written health and safety policies
• current arrangements for the effective planning and organisation of all actions identified in your risk assessments; and
• employee training on how to manage risk.

We can produce a detailed roadmap of the steps needed to be taken for your organisation to be able to both meet, and evidence, all health and safety requirements. Our health and safety consultants will identify where improvements need to be made, supporting your organisation with the implementation of an action plan and auditing progress to assure leadership and boards.

Our health and safety reviews assess the central control, governance, and auditing of health and safety compliance and performance and ensure it is in line with HSG65.

How can we help?

At Pennington Choices, we have over 20 years of experience in providing occupational Health and Safety services to clients of all sizes across a range of sectors including property, healthcare and sports and leisure. We know what good looks like, and our clients can support this. You can read some of our case studies here.

Our expert and qualified Health and Safety Consultants can assist you by acting as your competent person to ensure that you are complying with The Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations, 1999.

What now?

If you want to find out what your organisation’s current health and safety position is, download our FREE health and safety self-assessment.