Employees are the biggest asset in every business and keeping them safe helps the business improve and succeed. This is why, health and safety management is commonly known as the backbone of any business. Occupational health and safety goes beyond ensuring compliance to various safety protocols. It includes making work activities safer, so that both your business and employees are protected. Let us discuss some of the most common queries related to health and safety management.
What is a health and safety management system?
The part of an organisation’s management system that deals with the health and safety work policies. It helps to plan processes for mitigating accidents and prevent ill-health is known as health and safety management system. These processes are in line with management responsibilities and contain practices, procedures and resources that are utilised for developing as well as implementing the occupational safety and health policy.
Ideally, the entire gambit of the organisation’s occupational health and safety management involves policy, commitment, planning, implementation, operation, measuring performance, auditing, reviewing performance and attempting to enhance current status. By using ISO consulting services. You can entrust all these steps to the capable hands of professional, reliable and experienced people.
What are the steps in health and safety management?
Irrespective of the type of organisation, health and safety management includes five steps. They are:
- Policy and commitment: The organisation must prepare an occupational health. Safety policy that sets out clear direction for the organisation to demonstrate commitment to continuous improvement and put safety safeguards to enhance the health of all employees. Cost effective approaches to developing human and physical resources should be made. It should be in alignment with the wider context, stakeholder expectations, customer needs and employee activities.
- Planning: The organisation must formulate a plan to fulfil its health and safety policy as set out in the safety statement, by creating specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and time-specific objectives and targets for all managers and employees.
- Implementation and operation: Effective implementation underpins effective staff, involvement and participation throughout the organisation. The safety committee should sustain the health and safety of an organisation through effective communication and the promotion of competence, so that everyone is aware of the safety protocols. The visible and active leadership fosters a positive culture where safety and health are prioritised.
- Measuring performance: Performance should be measured against predetermined and agreed upon standards to reveal where improvement is needed. Active self-evaluation reveals how effectively the health and safety management system is functioning. So, performance evaluation also helps to determine the immediate causes of substandard performance. It identifies any underlying causes or implications for design improvement of the health and safety management system.
- Auditing and reviewing performance: Only those organizations that learn from relevant experience. It can apply the lessons learnt will be able to constantly improve and keep their employees safe. When performance is being audited. Internal reference to key performance indicators should be made and external comparison with business competitors as well as best practises in the industry should be done.
What issues do health and safety management system address and review?
So, Ideally, like mentioned above. An organization should periodically evaluate its health and safety policies and the procedures put in place to materialise the policy. This review should compare existing safety and health practice with the requirements of the health and safety legislation as well as the provisions set out in the organisation’s safety system.
The health and safety guidance in the organisation should be compared with the published health and safety guidance by various authorities as well as the best practises employed in the sector. By implementing the ISO 45001 certification, many organizations set up a safety and health management system in accordance with the agreed rules.
What is a safety statement and how should it be incorporated into the health policy?
So, Let us begin by first explaining what a health and safety policy is. A health and safety policy is a well-written document which recognises that optimum safety and good health are an integral part of the business performance. It is a statement that outlines the intentions of the organisation as well as the approach that would be utilised to provide a framework for actions. So that the health and safety targets can be attained.
The health and safety policy must be appropriate to the hazards and risks of the organisation. It must include a commitment to comply with relevant codes of practice and health and safety legislation. Additionally, it should provide a framework for measuring performance so that continuous improvement can be ensured. Lastly, the health and safety policy must clearly place the management as the prime responsibility for executing and measuring performance.
A safety statement is developed to recognize the health and safety policy. So that the contribution of the health and safety protocols can be measured. It outlines the need for leaders to support risk control. It secures full participation of all members in the organization. So, The members go on to outline the requirements or resources which would allow the health. So, It ensures safety policy implementation to occur adequately.
Conclusion
A health and safety management system is a part of an organisation’s management system that focuses on inculcating an adequate and appropriate health and safety policy that plans processes for mitigating all accidents and improving the health of all employees.
