There are a lot of factors to creating and maintaining a safe workplace so that oftentimes it is easy to get overwhelmed by them. In order to succeed in creating a safe working environment, you should be able to build and put into action an effective health and safety management system.
Your health and safety management system should put together all the different elements within the workplace that need attention to make certain you provide a safe working environment not only for the workers but to all the people who enters it.
Health and safety becomes a fundamental part of your business’s basic operations through your health and safety management system. With the implementation of an effective health and safety management system, you will have methods for handling reporting, responsibilities, planning and resourcing to establish a safer work environment.
The six elements of health and safety management systems are:
1. Safety Plan. This strategic action plan will make sure that there is a governance structure inside your company that makes certain each worker has a clear understanding of his safety obligations and is responsible in carrying out those obligations.
2. Policies, procedures and processes. Included here are all safety paper infrastructures inside your company. This paperwork describes all safety conduct, expectations, record-keeping, incident reporting, and incident notification recording.
3. Training and induction. In accordance with the nature of your workplace, any person who enters your workplace is required to have training on the rules of the company; the rules of the site; and the rules of the area they are going to. The training content will depend upon the level of risk the person will be exposed to.
4. Monitoring. Your duty to monitor your workplace will be based on conditions and need. You should always take into account the level of risk. More frequent and detailed monitoring should be done when the risk is higher.
In some instances, monitoring is required to ensure that all risk has been covered by a new risk assessment that has been implemented because of a change in process; and when an investigation happens after an incident.
5. Supervision. Adequate supervision is the only means of ensuring that workers are performing their safety obligations.
Higher level of supervision should be implemented when the level of safety control implemented to minimize risk is low.
6. Reporting. Safety reporting in all levels, not only at the management level should be required in your governance structure.
Adopting a satisfactory health and safety management system is not enough; active implementation of the system in the workplace is a must. Therefore, you need to ensure that workers conform with procedures and instructions, properly trained, and under an existing supervision.
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