What is a Health & Safety management system?

Why do you need Health and Safety Management?

You have a legal requirement under UK law to manage the health, safety, welfare and wellbeing of your employees, and people affected by the operations of your business. You need to be aware of Health and Safety legislation, that is relevant to your business. You have a legal obligation to draw up a Health and Safety Policy and arrangements. This document sets out what you will do to manage the health and safety within your business. The HSMS ensures you have the tools, tests, documents, and training to make the arrangements effective. It will ensure you and your staff are working as a team, towards a common goal. Key requirements will ensure you are legally compliant and will reduce accidents or potential illness help increase the efficiency of your workforce providing a positive Health and Safety Culture.

Why is Health & Safety Management Important?

You have a 'duty of care' to your employees and those affected by your operations. If you breach that duty you are putting people at risk from harm, through injury, sickness or even death. If you do not take measures to fullfil your duty of care, you are exposing the company and potentially yourself to hefty fines and possible imprisonment as well as damage to you company's reputation and destroying lives.

A Health and Safety Management System will help you ensure you have an effective level of health and safety control measures in place to protect workers and others. These controls should be tried and tested and designed to identify hazards, eliminate where possible risk and ensure you remain legally compliant. But most importantly you will be protecting the lives of your workers. Did you know that In UK, Health and Safety is the one area of law where you are guilty unless you can prove yourself to be innocent.

Hierarchy of Risk 

The Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 section 3 details legal requirements for Risk assessments with Schedule 1 listing the General Principles of Protection which have been translated into the common terminology of the 'Hierarchy of Risk':

What are my Health and Safety Legal Obligations?

There is a large amount of legislation in the UK in respect to Health and Safety. The overriding Act being the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 all legislation is accessible free of charge online at https://www.legislation.gov.uk.

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) have a vast amount of literature available online. These documents are designed to help you understand the requirements of UK law, your legal obligations and best practice. They can be found at https://www.hse.gov.uk. Key publications have the status of Approved Codes of Practice (ACOPS) and focus on specific UK regulations, cutting through the legal jargon and explaining what implement and how to ensure you meet your legal obligations.

What are the areas a HSMS must control?

All control measures should be specific to your business and focused on the control of hazards and elimination of risk. The 7 points below cover top control measures any company should consider as a minimum when considering the health, safety and wellbeing of staff: