Review Of Health And Safety Policy

A health and safety policy is a written statement that outlines your organization’s commitment to protecting the health and safety of its employees, customers, or other stakeholders. It should include a description of your company’s approach to managing risks and preventing accidents, as well as how you will respond if an incident does occur. Your health and safety policy should be reviewed and updated on a regular basis to ensure it remains effective.

A review of the health and safety policy is a vital part of any company’s risk management strategy. By conducting regular reviews, you can ensure that your policy remains up-to-date and relevant to your business. In this blog post, we will discuss the key reasons why you should conduct a review of your health and safety policy.

It is important that the health and safety policy is monitored and reviewed on a regular basis. For this to be successful, a series of benchmarks need to be established.

Reasons For A Review Of The Health And Safety Policy

There are several reasons for a review of the health and safety policy. The more important reasons are that:

• Significant organizational changes may have taken place; 
• There have been changes in key personnel; 
• There have been changes in legislation and/or guidance; 
• New work methods have been introduced; 
• There have been alterations to working arrangements and/or processes; 
• There have been changes following consultation with employees;
• The monitoring of risk assessments or accident/ incident investigations indicates that the health and safety policy is no longer totally effective; 
• Information from manufacturers has been received; 
• Advice from an insurance company has been received; 
• The findings of an external health and safety audit have been received; 
• Enforcement action has been taken by the HSE or Local Authority; 
• A sufficient period of time has elapsed since the previous review.

A positive health and safety performance promotion will achieve far more than simply preventing accidents and ill-health. It will:

• support the overall development of personnel; 
• improve communication and consultation throughout the organization; 
• minimize financial losses due to accidents and ill-health and other incidents; 
• directly involve senior managers at all levels of the organization; 
• improve supervision, particularly for young persons and those on occupational training courses; 
• improve production processes; 
• improve the public image of the organization or company.

However, some health and safety policies appear to be less than successful. There are many reasons for this. The most common are:

• the statements in the policy and the health and safety priorities not understood by or properly communicated to the workforce; 
• minimal resources made available for the implementation of the policy; 
• too much emphasis on rules for employees and too little on management policy; 
• A lack of parity with other organization activities (such as finance and quality control) due to mistaken concerns about the costs of health and safety and the effect of those costs on overall performance. This attitude produces a poor health and safety culture; 
• lack of senior management involvement in health and safety, particularly at the board level; 
• Employees are concerned that their health and safety issues are not being addressed or are not receiving adequate health and safety information. This can lead to low morale among the workforce and, possibly, high absenteeism; 
• high labor turnover; 
• inadequate or no PPE; 
• unsafe and poorly maintained machinery and equipment; 
• A lack of health and safety monitoring procedures.