Health and safety planning involves setting objectives, identifying hazards, assessing risks, implementing standards of performance and, above all perhaps, developing a positive culture.
Security professionals tasked with looking after health and safety, then, should not only identify hazards and assess risks, but also decide how those hazards and risks can be eliminated or controlled. Planning should ensure that the business complies with the most relevant and applicable health and safety laws. Agreeing health and safety targets with other line managers and supervisors can assist in identifying those areas of risk that should be addressed. In all cases, procedures to deal with serious and imminent danger should be in place, maintained and revamped if necessary.
Setting standards against which performance can be measured may assist in assessing health and safety requirements. These standards should set out what members of your team have to do to ensure delivery of the agreed upon health and safety policy, as well as controlling risks. They must be measurable, achievable and realistic if success is to be attained. Such standards will identify who does what, when and with what result.
Performance assessment processes
Employers need to assess health and safety performance to discover if plans and provisions already in place are successful. This will inform managers about the reliability and effectiveness of their health and safety systems, at the same time allowing an assessment of where the business is, where it wants to be, what the difference is between the two variables and why. This will determine any modifications that may be needed to your health and safety planning.
In truth, there are two types of assessment that you can carry out on behalf of your organisation, namely active and reactive monitoring. Active monitoring is carried out before anything goes wrong, and is achieved by way of regular inspection and checking to ensure that standards are being implemented and management controls are working. We are talking about a preventative system here, and very obviously the best one to adopt.
As its wording suggests, reactive monitoring will take place after an incident has occurred and will involve learning from mistakes – whether they have resulted in injuries and illness, property damage or perhaps a near miss on any count.
Often viewed as a ‘closing the gate after the horse has bolted’-style approach, reactive monitoring can still be used to your employer’s advantage as procedures already in place can subsequently be improved upon.
Sometimes, accidents will happen without fault being attributed, but lessons can still be learned. A 100% fail-safe protection system is still yet to be devised, hence the need to maintain and check that standards are adequate and being adhered to.
Security managers should ensure that the information accumulated from monitoring is used to identify situations that create risks, and that these risks are addressed – giving priority to the greatest risks. Look closely at serious events and risks with the potential for serious harm and allow implementation of procedures to eliminate – where possible – or reduce the potential for that risk to occur. These steps can assist in producing health and safety policies and a management strategy that will be successful. Remember that no system of safety is 100% infallible, and that anything could go wrong. Don’t let complacency creep in.
Managing health and safety
The Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 define more explicitly what employers are required to do to manage health and safety in accordance with the terms and conditions of the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974. Under these regulations, the main requirement places a duty on employers to conduct risk assessments in the workplace.
No matter how big or small, all companies must carry out risk assessments. All activities in the workplace have to be risk assessed with the aim of ensuring that no members of the security team or general staff are hurt or become ill. Those assessments must be carried out by a competent individual who knows what is expected of them.
In this context, a risk assessment is nothing more than a careful examination of what could cause harm to individuals in the workplace, allowing the person responsible for managing health and safety to weight up the suitability of precautions taken and decide whether or not more stringent measures should be adopted.
If tasked with managing health and safety as well as security, the security manager must decide if a hazard is significant, and whether satisfactory precautions cover the hazard such that any risk then takes on minor precautions. A hazard means anything that can cause harm (for example, working from ladders), while a risk is the chance – either high or low – that someone will be harmed by that hazard.
Five steps to compliance
There are five simple steps that you can take to assist in compliance with the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999. First, look for the hazards. Then decide who might be harmed, and how. Evaluate the risks and decide whether existing precautions are adequate or if more can be done. Record your findings, and then review your assessment (with a view to revising it if necessary).
The hazards in your place of employment may be few and relatively simple. Checking them might entail nothing more than using your common sense, but that doesn’t mean that such checks are unnecessary. It’s likely you’ll already know the circumstances under which harm could be caused. If so, check that all reasonable precautions have been taken to avoid the injury.
Walk around your company’s building(s) and look at elements that could reasonably be expected to cause harm. Concentrate on those that could lead to serious harm or affect several people. Ignore any trivial hazards. Listen to the employees as you carry out the assessment, because it’s they who are doing the job on a daily basis. This is particularly applicable to members of the security team, of course.
There’s no need to list individuals by name, merely think about groups of people who may well be affected (ie maintenance personnel, people sharing your workplace, members of the public when they visit the premises, members of staff who are less able-bodied, inexperienced (new) members of staff and loan workers (ie contractors).
For each significant hazard you must decide whether it presents a high, medium or low risk. In turn, this will enable you to determine whether or not you need to do more to reduce the risk. Remember, too, that some risk will usually remain.
It’s advisable to obtain the standards used throughout the industry to which your company ‘belongs’. Acceptable industry practice can then be taken into account. Usually, more will need to be done.
Ultimately, the aim is to make all risks small by adding the necessary precautions.
Maintain a written record
In terms of the risk analysis, it’s often useful to keep a written record of what has been done. In all circumstances, recording the significant findings of your assessment is a necessity. Hazards and conclusions must be recorded. Once those findings are recorded, all employees must then be informed.
Keep the written records for future reference or use. They can assist in inspector site visits, remind you of particular hazards and precautions – and shows that you have done what the law requires.
From a legal standpoint, remember you need to be able to show that proper checks have been conducted, affected persons consulted and obviously significant hazards dealt with (taking into account the consequences). You also need to demonstrate that the precautions taken were reasonable, and the remaining risk is low.
Where any major changes (ie procedures) are introduced or where a new job introduces different hazards of its own then it’s likely that amendments to the assessment may be required at some point.
In any case, it’s good practice for managers to review their company’s health and safety assessment from time to time in order to ensure that all precautions are working effectively. You can never be too prepared.
