You may not think that health and safety laws apply to you when working in a low risk business. While you might think the risk of accidents are extremely low you still have a duty to ensure the safety of those working in your organisation. If you run a small business you will need to know what is required of you and how to go about reducing hazards and therefore health and safety management training will be vitally important.
Don’t Do it All Yourself
If you have several employees you have to assign a health and safety role to one or more of them. To fill this position and perform the tasks it requires, training will be essential unless they have the training already. You can even hire someone outside of your organisation to help you, although it is often far more affordable to train someone in-house.
Health and Safety Management
The competent person put in charge of health and safety management will need to create and write up the health and safety for your business. If you do not have a competent person or health and safety officer read our post how to become a health and safety officer. If you don’t have more than five employees you don’t have to write up the health and safety policy; however it makes good practice to do so and can help protect you should an accident occur. Once you have created your health and safety policy share it with your employees and ensure they understand it as it is only effective if your employees follow it.
Reducing the Risks by Assessing
One of the most effective ways of reducing the hazards found at work is by conducting risk assessments. These have to be performed for each task from changing a light bulb to taking in deliveries. The assessment should be discussed with the person performing the task. Inform your employee of the risks they face and the systems you are introducing to try and reduce those hazards. Without communicating these safe working methods the risk assessment is pointless.