This is Safety Break! You give us 1 minute, and we’ll give you the world, of health and safety.

Policy!

All businesses need to have a health and safety policy. It is a common misconception that you do not need one if you have less than 5 employees! If you have less than 5 employees you do not need a written policy, emphasis on the word written, but you should have a policy on how you manage health and safety.

Who do you know that would be able to verbalise their health and safety arrangements to the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) or in a court of law? I don’t know a single person that could!

A good policy includes a one page Statement of Intent; details on how health and safety is Organised within your company, an organisational chart is perfect; and then the individual Arrangements covered, examples include Risk Assessment, Training, Display Screen Equipment, Manual Handling and Working at Height.

AI is wonderful but it tells you it might not be 100% accurate, and in my experience that is 100% true. I conducted a Gap Analysis for a client who had an AI written policy that was missing 12 arrangements!

Once penned, the policy should be reviewed following significant change (including incidents) and periodically, best practice is annually but 2-3 yearly may be suitable depending on the risk profile of your business.

For small, low risk businesses, the HSE template is usually good enough – Print: Health and safety at work: criminal and civil law.

For all other businesses, you should have something much more robust and it is worth getting someone to help you!

Thank you for reading.