Who is responsible?

Owner/employer/manager

You will have prime responsibility for the health and safety of:

• your workers;
• members of the public; and
• contractors working with you.

Questions to ask yourself include:

• Do I have enough knowledge to organise work for health and safety?
• Have I thought this through and implemented good health and safety procedures and checks?

Worker/supervisor

You have responsibility to cooperate with your employer, such as:

• following company rules;
• wearing personal protective equipment; and
• reporting accidents and unsafe practices.

If you are a supervisor you mustn’t turn a blind eye to unsafe behaviour.

Health and safety practitioner

You have a legal duty to provide fit-for-purpose advice. Courts have handed down penalties on consultants who have failed in their duty.
Ask yourself:

• Do I emphasise the need for people in organisations to take personal responsibility for the decisions they make and not just rely on written procedures and risk assessments?

Supplier of goods and services

Questions to ask yourself include:

• Do I have procedures to ensure that I provide a service that complies with the law?
• Do I have a system to check on my workers’ health and safety performance when working with other companies?

Managing Health and Safety

Managing for health and safety is about:

• Looking after your business or organisation
• Looking after your people
• Looking after your reputation

Health and safety and successful business or organisation performance are complementary. Good leaders look after their businesses/organisations, and manage skilled workforces who have confidence in them.
As with all parts of your business/organisation practice, to manage health and safety you need to plan, deliver, check quality and take stock to see what you can improve.

Five steps to risk assessment

There is no set way of undertaking a risk assessment but the simplest and most straightforward way is to consider:

• what may cause harm in your workplace,
• who may be harmed,
• how accidents could happen
• the actions that you will need to take

• recording your findings. 

Remember a risk assessment is only effective if you and your staff act on the findings. It is important you follow through with any actions required and review the assessment on a regular basis. 

Risk managemment

Risk management involves you, the employer, looking at the risks that arise in the workplace and then putting sensible health and safety measures in place to control them. By doing this you can protect your most valuable asset, your employees, as well as members of the public from harm. During 2004/05, 220 people were killed and over 150,000 were injured at work because of a failure to manage risk.

As an employer, the law requires you to assess and manage health and safety risks - for most businesses this is not difficult to do and HSE has published Five Steps to Risk Assessment to help you. This is not the only way to do a risk assessment, there are other methods that work well, particularly for more complex risks and circumstances. However we believe this method is the most straightforward for most organisations.

The basics......

Primary Employers Responsibilities and Duties
(The Short Version)

Employers must

• Appoint a competent person or persons to advise on health and safety – Health and Safety Adviser  
• Have a Health And Safety Management System (Health and Safety Policy and Arrangements)
• Carry out health and safety risk assessments for all their activities
• Implement control measures to protect employees and others from the risks created by the employers activities
• Appoint competent persons to assist with implementing control measures.
• Provide a safe place of work and safe access to the workplace
• Provide a safe system of work
• Provide and maintain safe equipment
• Control hazardous substances
• Protect employees and others from hazards and risks in premises and facilities
• Design and manufacture so there is no risk to the end user
• Keep records of health and safety policy and arrangements and risk assessments

The above responsibilities are a brief summary for further explanation see below. 
The management of health and safety can appear a daunting task, however, there are a number of simple steps that can be taken which can help ensure that an organisation is properly managing its health and safety.

Why is Health and Safety so complicated ......

Its not complicated, it is common sense and getting to know what you should be doing about health and safety should be easy, that's why l hope to help you here with information and advice about all aspects of health and safety.