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Health and safety for small businesses
Why should you read this guide?
If you are in business you will know that health and safety is an absolute minefield. You, as the business owner, have the ultimate responsibility for each and every member of your staff working on or off your premises - sometimes when they are not even working. If you have not looked into your own obligations this guide will hopefully spur you into action.
Background
There are many reasons for paying close attention to health and safety rules - not least of which is the wellbeing of your staff and customers. We are also in an age of rising personal litigation and this means that you could lose out financially by not taking necessary precautions. Health and Safety legislation may be considered yet another disturbance factor to trading; it is also used fairly often as an excuse by less enthusiastic staff for not doing certain tasks. However, the fact is that there are rules in place and we all need to abide by them.
What you must do
The Health and Safety Executive issue a list of 10 things that nearly all business must comply with. These are as follows:
- Register your business with the Health and Safety Executive or local authority
- Have Employers Liability Insurance and display the policy in a prominent place
- A competent person needs to be in place to help with health and safety issues
- Have a health and safety policy in place to show how you will deal with issues that arise
- Carry out a risk assessment to see what harm you may cause. Once you have carried out this risk assessment you must act on your findings
- Provide basic welfare facilities such as toilets, places to wash etc.
- Carry out health and safety training for your workers – this must be free
- Ask your workers about health and safety issues and act on any comments they make
- Display a Health and Safety at work poster or provide each member of staff with a leaflet
- Report relevant accidents, diseases or dangerous occurrences. Accidents must be recorded.
Health and safety policy
Every business needs to have a policy and this should be given to every member of staff and available to visitors to your business if requested. If you have more than five staff this policy needs to be written. The policy needs to show what your intentions are with health and safety. What will be done if an issue arises, how will you try and prevent issues from arising, who is responsible for what etc.
An important thing to remember is that health and safety in the workplace is everyone's responsibility. As the employer and business owner, responsibility ultimately rests with you. However, each member of staff is responsible for their own well being and provided they have been given adequate training they should be able to spot any dangerous activity and report it.
Summary
Health and Safety is not going away. You do have legal responsibilities for your staff and customers. Look at the website below and ensure that you are meeting all the regulations and take a note to review this regularly. Give a responsible member of your staff the position of Health and Safety officer if you do not want to do this yourself. Remember though it is still your responsibility.
Further information
The Health and Safety Executive is an excellent resource for all things relevant. You will also be able to get further information form your local authority who may have a health and safety officer who can visit to give you advice.
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