Article: Managing health and safety

STEP 1: DEFINE YOUR POLICY

The safety policy is sometimes written merely to ensure compliance with the law. In effect, it becomes a worthless document. A policy should be simple and straightforward that tells your staff, customers and other stakeholders the standard that you want to achieve for health and safety, and how you are going to achieve it.

Follow these rules:

• Keep it short and simple
• Ensure it is signed and dated by the senior person
• Make it known to everyone (eg by posting it on the wall)

Examples of phrases that may be found in a policy statement include 'Safety is as important to us as the quality of our service' and 'we will produce work to a high standard without risking the health and safety of our staff and customers'.

It must be signed by the senior person in the company, and dated. A few paragraphs is all that is needed.

STEP 2: ORGANISE YOUR SAFETY

Identify who is responsible for doing what. The best way of approaching this is to give simple responsibilities to different people, and to include this in their job description. Make a simple list of tasks.

Examples include:

1. who should staff report problems to?
2. who will deal with fire drills, keep the fire log up to date etc?
3. who will deal with first aid?
4. who will arrange training and keep records?

Make these known to everyone, by posting them on the wall etc or including them in staff talks and meetings.

Ultimate responsibility must always be with the most senior person as it is they who have the final decision as to whether actions are implemented, money and other resources made available etc.

STEP 3: PLAN WHAT YOU NEED TO DO

The ultimate plan is to ensure the job gets done in time, and also gets done safely. Therefore make a list of the various hazardous tasks, and consider the hazards and risks from doing these (this is a basic risk assessment). Then decide what you are going to do about them.

Consider things like:

• how are you going to keep your tools and equipment safe and serviceable (get someone to inspect it regularly and keep a log book)?
• how are you going to allocate space (eg for welding, storage, vehicle movement) to ensure these tasks can be done safely?
• what safety equipment do you need and how are you going to plan for replacements to be made available?

STEP 4: IMPLEMENT SAFE PROCEDURES

Look at your hazardous tasks. These may include:

• welding
• paint spraying
• using or storing flammable liquids or gases
• removing engines and other large or heavy items
• dealing with unsatisfied customers!

Define simple job instructions that ensure the job is done effectively and safely. Inform your workers accordingly, show them what you want done and how, check that they can and will do what you want. Keep a record for each person confirming that they have been informed and trained. A simple record card is all that you need for this.

STEP 5: MEASURE PERFORMANCE

Most vehicle repairers will be familiar with measuring sales and other outputs. How do you measure health and safety performance?

Here are some examples:

• Check that workers are following procedures eg over a 2-3 day period and count the number of compliances or breaches
• Check whether accidents have increased or decreased
• Check ill-health and absence records

An enforcement officer's visiting and finding no serious problems indicates that performance is acceptable.

STEP 6: MONITOR and REVIEW

There is no point in making a rule or procedure unless you check it is being followed. There are several ways of monitoring. The quickest, easiest and cheapest is to simply 'spot check' when people are not expecting to be monitored. Your findings should always be actioned to make this effective (compliment compliance/correct failings). This will tell staff that you won't let rules be flouted.

Other monitoring techniques include:

• environmental monitoring (eg emission testing to ensure you are not breaching Environmental requirements)
• Noise monitoring
• Safety tours or inspections of the workplace (eg housekeeping, storage)

STEP 7: AUDIT

When thinking about audits, remember the old adage: forearmed is forewarned. The purpose of a health and safety audit is to check that the systems and rules that you have been put in place actually work! It enables you to:

• identify where your gaps (ie weaknesses) are
• identify where your strengths lie (ie less resources needed)
• plan ahead instead of 'fire fighting' after a problem has arisen
• spend your time and money where it is most needed

Audits are often undertaken by professional associations as part of membership criteria, or by manufacturers and safety will form part of the overall audit. Specific health and safety audits are often more detailed, but give a clearer and more practical picture of how you are doing.

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) suggest that audits should be undertaken annually, and research has found that he savings to your company from this proactive approach often far outweigh the time and trouble spent in doing the audit.