Employee health & safety is the employer’s responsibility under The Health and Safety at Work Act 1974, although employees have important responsibilities too.
As an employer, you must do everything reasonably practical to protect the welfare of your workers; Under employee health & safety, this means that the mitigating action should be proportionate to the risk.
Employee health & safety covers anything that might cause them halm. This is not only something that could cause injury but also anything that could affect their long term health.
Good employee health & safety requires good management and common sense, so let’s get started with an overview of the guidelines and regulations’ intentions.
Guidelines & Regulations
Some regulations apply across all types of companies, such as the Manual Handling Regulations. At the same time, other guidelines are specific to industries and the unique hazards they encounter, such as in the fields of nuclear energy and mining.
In its most general terms, employers have a responsibility and a duty to provide employees with information about workplace risks. You must consult with your employees, or their representatives, on business health & safety matters. Workers have a duty to co-operate with employers and co-workers to help everyone meet their legal requirements.
There are nine duties you have as an employer to meet your basic employee health & safety responsibilities. You should:
- Appoint a competent person to manage your corporate health & safety.
- Prepare a health & safety policy.
- Carry out a risk assessment to identify hazards and assess their risks.
- Provide free of charge workplace health & safety training, informing workers of their duties.
- Provide adequate workplace facilities such as toilets, washbasins, and drinking water.
- Display the health and safety law poster or give employees the equivalent leaflet.
- Provide advice on your first aid kit, appoint first aiders, and train workers.
- Attain employer’s liability insurance for your business and display it where it can be easily read.
- Report illness and accidents, including injuries and near-misses. Major injuries must be reported to HSE’s Incident Contact Centre on 0345 300 9923.
The Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 goes into more detail on each topic.
If you are an employee, you must:
- Follow the training
- Take reasonable care of yourself and others health and safety
- Co-operate with your employer
- Tell your employer, supervisor, manager, or health and safety rep if you think inadequate precautions are putting workers safety at serious risk
Stay Safe With the Right Workwear
As an employer, you must provide free of charge, equipment and protective clothing for your workers and ensure it is properly looked after. One of the easiest ways to do this is by using a workwear rental and laundry service.
Workwear rental fulfils your employee health & safety needs by always ensuring clean workwear is available at the start of every shift. The workwear is collected at regular intervals, inspected, repaired, and laundered to strict hygiene standards.
You can protect employee health & safety with workwear designed for specific jobs and industries. Flame retardant, anti-static, and hi-visibility clothing all fall within the scope of these solutions.
If you are interested in finding out how Lindstrom can help you with workwear rental, get in touch with a member of our team.