An Exploration of Health and Safety Laws
Employee health is paramount to the success and wellbeing of your staff and team. You want to create a working environment that people can thrive in and not one that stifles creativity, happiness, or focus.
A huge contribution to that is the health of your employees – whether that’s mental, physical, or emotional, it’s all valid and deserves to be spoken of.
As such, we wanted to explore the key pieces of the 1974 health and safety law that you may not be aware of.
For employers:
1) Provide information, training, and supervision
This could involve a whole wealth of advice: it may be training with high-tech machinery or it could involve supervision carrying out certain tasks. Often providing information or training is typically limited to physical trades, office employees still have a legal right to be informed, trained, and supervised in a safe and secure manner.
2) Provide a safe working environment
Also, included in this is providing a safe place for employment. For example, if you’re working on a shop floor, this area needs to comply to safety standards to ensure no accidents to staff or the public can occur. However, a safe space for employment is also highlighted in the law.
This may include a staff room or locker room. Ensuring these spaces are safe for your employees will mean you remain legally aware and, also, it creates a space that your employees are more likely to return to.
3) Talk to safety representatives
Not only do you need to include written safety policies and risk assessments, you also need to make sure that you have safety representatives either on your staff or on your contact list.
This will provide a safe space for your employees and give them a person to reach out to should they need it.
For employees:
1) Take care of their own health (and other people)
Of course, it’s up to the employer to create a safe space.
However, it’s crucial for employees to have some awareness of potential dangers that their actions may cause, and as such, it is in the law that employees must be aware of their own health; this isn’t to say they shouldn’t find support at work, mind.
2) Co-operate with their employers
Just because it is in the law that employees should co-operate with their employers, that isn’t an excuse for you to treat them poorly. If you task them with something that impedes their health, safety, or wellbeing, then your employee has every right to decline.
3) Do not involve yourself with anything against the interest of health and safety
The rules are there for a reason, if you directly go against a (reasonable) rule enforced by your employer or one of the health and safety laws, then you may be held liable.
So, make sure you don’t involve yourself with anything that could directly go against you.
If you need any clarity on the health and safety laws, then reach out to a representative from OH One – you can find us at 0333 772 1697 and info@OH-One.co.uk.
If you want to read more about the Health and Safety law then head here.
