Health, Safety and Welfare at Work

Health and safety in the workplace is not only the responsibility of the designated Health and Safety Officer, it is the duty of all members of staff to be responsible for the safety of everyone they may have to deal with during the working day; both their colleagues and members of the public.

The Health and Safety Executive are a body whose role is to promote safety in the workplace; both by providing information to employers and their employees, and also by ensuring that rules and guidelines are adhered to in everyday practice.

According to the Health and Safety Executive (or H&SE), the employer has a responsibility under law to ensure, as far as is reasonably practicable, the employee’s health, safety and welfare at work. The employer’s duties include:

Making the workplace safe and without risks to health

Ensuring that plant and machinery are safe and that safe systems of work are set and are followed

Ensuring articles and substances are moved, stored and used safely

Providing adequate welfare facilities

Giving the information, instruction, training and supervision necessary for health and safety

It is the duty of the employer to assess the risks to the health and safety of his/her staff. This will often necessitate a vigorous and thorough inspection of the workplace, paying particular attention to any piece of equipment or plant and any working practice that may be hazardous to the safety of staff. If there are 5 or more employees, any findings of the risk assessment must be recorded.

Plant and machinery must be regularly inspected to ensure that it is in perfect working condition. Any worn parts must be replaced immediately and any safety guards must not only be fitted and in good working order, but the employer must also ensure that the operator is actually using them at all times: It is easy to leave a safety guard unused to save time on occasion, but this kind of behaviour soon leads to bad working practices.

There must be proper storage facilities for all articles of equipment, both personal and belonging to the company, and also for all substances.

Articles left lying around the workplace are hazardous to health; somebody could easily trip or fall over some item that is not stored properly. An untidy site is a dangerous site!

Any substances such as flammable liquids for example must be stored correctly. This means in a non-combustible container, which is itself locked in a suitable storage room or inside a steel cabinet.

The workplace itself must satisfy basic health and welfare requirements; there must be an adequate first-aid facility provided, which is clean and well stocked with basic items such as bandages, eyewash solution and antiseptic cleaning solution.

The employer must also provide clean toilets, washing facilities and a suitable rest area, which is warm, dry, well lit and quiet.

The employer has a responsibility to ensure ...

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Any substances such as flammable liquids for example must be stored correctly. This means in a non-combustible container, which is itself locked in a suitable storage room or inside a steel cabinet.

The employer must also provide clean toilets, washing facilities and a suitable rest area, which is warm, dry, well lit and quiet.

The employer has a responsibility to ensure that any employees are aware of safe working practices and procedures. This includes drawing up emergency procedures, such as what to do in the event of a fire. Any public building or place of work must have a designated assembly point in case an evacuation of the premises is put into effect. This is so that emergency services are able to discover very quickly if there are any persons still in danger who may need to be rescued.

Basic safety instruction must be given to employees. This may be in the form of information posters placed on display in the rest area. The type of information given on these posters may be advice on how to lift heavy or large objects safely or perhaps on how best to provide emergency medical care in the event of an accident in the workplace.

If more specialised instruction is necessary, such as safe operation of specialised equipment, then it may be necessary to invite an expert onto the premises to instruct staff in correct operational procedures. Sometimes, if a particular instruction course needs to be undertaken by a member or members of staff, then the candidate may have to travel to an independent place of instruction. This is often the case if staff need to be trained in fire fighting or survival at sea techniques.

The employer also has a duty to ensure that adequate, legible safety and warning signs are in place around the work site. These may include information signs that give information allowing a person to modify their behaviour in the workplace to avoid possible injury; “Fork trucks operating in this area” for example.

Some signs are prohibitive – “No hard hat, no work”. Some signs warn of a specific hazard. These type are usually in a red triangle. “Beware of overhead cables” is a good example.

Sometimes, even when all members of staff have been given thorough safety training and the workplace has been thoroughly inspected, hazards have been removed as far as is practicable and signs giving information and warnings are all in place, even then accidents can still happen. It is impossible to plan for all eventualities; people are after all, only human and liable to make mistakes. Equipment can still go wrong even after the minutest inspection and then there is what an insurer might term “an act of god”; a freak gust of wind or a bolt of lightning.

In these eventualities people can still be injured or even killed. To try and minimise the damage that cannot be trained or planned for, the employer has a responsibility to provide Personal Protective Equipment.

There are many different items of PPE. Some protect against high noise levels, some against extremes of temperature, some against falling objects and some serve to make the wearer more visible to other members of staff. These may include:

Steel-toed boots
Gloves
Eye goggles
Hard hats
Knee pads
Ear protectors/plugs
High visibility clothing

The wearing of Personal Protective Equipment is a last line of defence against injury in the workplace and should never negate good working practices and proper safety training.

Sometimes even after all the above has been provided by the conscientious employer to safeguard the health and safety of his/her staff, accidents still occur and people are still injured. In this eventuality, it is the responsibility of the employer to record any accident in the official company injury book. The employer also has a duty to report any such incident to the relevant authority and to take steps to ensure that anything possible should be done to prevent a reoccurrence of the event that led to the injury.

Responsibilities of the Employee.

The employee too has certain responsibilities in the workplace, not only to safeguard his own health and welfare, but also that of his colleagues and any members of the public he may come into contact with.

The employee has legal duties to:

Take reasonable care for his/her own safety

Co-operate with his/her employer on health and safety policies

Correctly use work items and equipment

Not interfere with or misuse items provided for his/her own health and safety or that of any other person

The employee must carry out his duties at work in a responsible and thoughtful manner. He must particularly give due consideration to his own safety and that of other people at all times. If the employee’s mind is not fully on the job, he can become a hazard to everyone’s safety, particularly if he is operating plant or machinery at the time.

Health and safety procedures in the workplace are of no use if they are not adhered to. The employee has a legal duty to follow safe working practices laid down by his employer. These guidelines and rules are in place not only for the welfare of the employee himself, but also for that of his colleagues and any members of the public who may be visiting the workplace.

Any tools, plant, machinery or substances must be used in the correct manner for which they are designed. It is the employee’s responsibility to follow any operating procedures to the letter and to always use the correct tool for the job in hand. When somebody uses a makeshift hammer or lever to save time, the makeshift tool is liable to fail, possibly causing injury to the employee himself or somebody else in the vicinity.

This simple advice applies to any piece of equipment in the workplace; incorrect use of equipment is dangerous and can cause serious injury. The employee has a legal duty to see that this does not happen.

Safety equipment must be used wherever it is appropriate to do so. As with tools or other equipment, items provided for personal safety must also be used in the correct manner for which they are intended. The employee has a responsibility by law to protect himself properly with Personal Protective Equipment provided by the employer.

Any other items such as signs, safety guards or fire extinguishers must not be tampered with in any way. This is of the utmost importance as such items are there for the welfare and safety of everybody. For this reason it is illegal to tamper with or misuse any equipment that is provided for safety purposes. Using a fire extinguisher as a water pistol may seem like harmless fun one day, but it could cost somebody his or her life the next.

The above work is based on the Health and Safety at Work Act, 1974.

Construction (Design and Management) Regulations, 1994.

As well as the Health and Safety at Work Act of 1974, which applies to any workplace in any industry, there are also regulations which apply specifically to the construction industry. These are the Construction (Design and management) Regulations, 1994.

These regulations, known as CDM’s for short, apply to any client, other than a domestic client; that means one who is not planning to use the finished building for business purposes. Any commercial construction, however large or small is subject to these regulations.

The construction Industry has the highest recorded incidents of accident and injury of any UK industry and CDM’s are in place to help combat these statistics by coordinating health and safety throughout the construction process.

CDM’s also apply to all demolition and structural dismantling work.

Responsibilities of the Client:

Appoint a planning supervisor in sufficient time for him/her to be able to draw up a suitable health and safety plan, prior to the commencement of the project.
This planning supervisor must be provided with all relevant information regarding the health and safety issues specific to this particular site. For example, access to the site may be close to a major road junction which requires extra sign-posting. There may be high-voltage power lines crossing the site.
Appoint a principal contractor. The principal contractor must be given sufficient time to be able to develop a suitable construction-phase health and safety plan. This must be done before any construction work begins.
The client must be reasonably satisfied that all those who are appointed are competent to carry out all their health and safety responsibilities.
The client must ensure that the health and safety file that was compiled during the construction process is kept readily available for inspection by anyone who may want to conduct any further construction work on the site in the future.

The client may choose to appoint an agent to act on their behalf. In these circumstances the client must ensure that any person appointed in this capacity is fully competent and qualified to carry out their health and safety responsibilities. The Health and Safety Executive must be informed of any such appointment before work commences.