Very simply; yes.

The law says that as an employer you “must appoint someone competent to help you meet your health and safety duties. A competent person is someone with the necessary skills, knowledge and experience to manage health and safety”.

That doesn’t mean your only options are to either directly employ someone full-time or officially appoint an external consultant to fulfil this duty. You probably manage most aspects of your business yourself, or with help from your staff. Health and safety needn’t be any different; you could appoint one or a combination of:

• yourself
• one or more of your workers as part of their duties

However, if you do this, you need to be confident of your ability to manage health and safety objectively, competently and comprehensively. Seeking external help or advice may be a reliable and cost-effective solution to ensure you manage your legal duties.

You must do whatever is reasonably practicable to protect the health, safety and welfare of your employees and any other people who might be affected by your activities.

This means you have to make sure people are protected from anything that may cause them harm, by managing any risks that could arise from activities under your control.

You must complete risk assessments to decide how to address the risks that could cause harm. For businesses with 5 or more employees, these risk assessments must be formally documented (i.e. written down).

Arising from these principal duties to manage health and safety via risk assessment, you must:

• Provide and maintain a safe working environment, including adequate welfare facilities and suitable arrangements for access and egress
• Supply suitable plant, equipment and systems of work
• Establish means for storing and handling equipment, chemicals and other substances safely
• Ensure employees are given information, instruction and training about workplace risks and how to manage them, and give all personnel the opportunity to discuss health and safety concerns and issues

The HSE confirms that,“an employer does not have to take measures to avoid or reduce the risk if they are technically impossible or if the time, trouble or cost of the measures would be grossly disproportionate to the risk”.

This is why suitable and sufficient risk assessments are so important. The law only requires you to do what a reasonable employer and a healthy dose of common sense  would do anyway: “that is, to look at what the risks are and take sensible measures to tackle them”.

Health and safety enforcement authorities (normally the HSE) are empowered to take action against you. If you do not comply with relevant regulations you are committing a criminal offence. You could:

• receive verbal or written advice on the action you need to take to comply
• receive an improvement or prohibition notice, which requires you to take specific actions to rectify a situation and could prevent you from working until you do so
• be prosecuted

If the HSE do intervene like this, you’ll be charged for the time they spend on the case. This is called a ‘fee for intervention’ (FFI), and can very quickly accumulate into charges for thousands of pounds. In addition, if you are prosecuted, you are likely to be fined.

If someone is injured because of your business activities, they may be able to make a compensation claim against you. Successful claims will result in you having to pay damages. You are legally obliged to have relevant employers’ or public liability insurances to meet the cost of any compensation. It’s a criminal offence if you do not have it.

Of course, financial implications such as fines and compensation damages are significant, but often only the tip of the iceberg. The hidden costs of poor health and safety management can be vast and include factors such as;

• damage to reputation, leading to reduced income and turnover,
• increased absences and staff turnover,
• reduced productivity and increased recruitment and training costs,
• rising insurance premiums,
• extra costs to repair or rectify damage from incidents

Legal and financial considerations are critical for any business. However, at Thrive we believe the moral argument for good health and safety is the most compelling. Failing in your obligations means people are more likely to get hurt or made ill – the human costs are potentially far more significant, long-lasting and damaging than prosecutions and fines.

Everyone has the right to come to work and return to their family fit, healthy and unharmed.

Well to coin a phrase, if you think health and safety is expensive, try having an accident.

In 2018/19, the average fine resulting from health and safety prosecutions was £150,000.

However, rather than seeing health and safety as a nett cost to the business, simply to avoid the prospect of a fine you don’t think you’re likely to get anyway, try considering health and safety as an investment.

Good practice in health and safety makes sound business sense. It is widely accepted and proven that with the right approach to health and safety businesses can:

• • Protect workers from the suffering caused by accidents and ill health
  • Reduce absences and sick leave
  • Retain staff
  • Maintain reputation
  • Boost productivity and profits
  • Reduce insurance premiums and legal costs

No, not at all.

At Thrive, we don’t think contract packages provide the agile and cost-effective service that our clients look for.

Why pay for something you don’t necessarily need?

We prefer to simply work on an “as-request” basis, to suit your individual requirements.

No – the service we provide to every client is bespoke to suit their needs. You may simply want an annual audit or one-off training, but you may need monthly visits to co-ordinate your health and safety management more directly.

Whatever you need, we’ll provide the right solution without any minimum annual charges or retainer fees. We charge on a competitive day-rate basis, and only for the work we do.

A key strength of our business is understanding yours. We’ll get to know you and what makes your business tick; and, critically, what challenges you’re facing. To start with, we’ll give you honest, straightforward recommendations of what you need to do to ensure you’re complying with your legal obligations. We will work with you to develop a plan to address the recommendations; carefully considering the options we have and which fit best with your business.

We will never advise you to do anything you don’t need to do or overcomplicate things, and we don’t just tell you what to do then disappear and expect you do it all yourself. We’ll coach and support on anything you want to try and achieve yourself, then pick up the slack and use our expertise to fill in the gaps.  Whether you decide you need weekly visits or the occasional phone-call, we’re always here to help. That’s what we’re here for.

A management system is a set of arrangements which describes how a business intends to conduct its core activities in a consistent and controlled manner. The main aims of a management are to ensure compliance with legal duties, industry practice and client requirements, but also to generate continuous improvement in business performance and, ultimately, enhance customer satisfaction.

Very simply; think of a management system as a user manual for running your business. The manual should provide everyone with clear, defined roles and responsibilities and an understanding of exactly how to fulfil them.

Management systems are often configured as a suite of documents containing policies, procedures, instructions and forms. Whether those documents make up traditional, paper-based systems or up-to-date cloud-based electronic files, all management systems are developed in line with a “Plan-Do-Check-Act” principle:

• PLAN – the business strategies required to achieve compliance and meet customer requirements
• DO – implement the plans, and ensure everyone knows their role in following them
• CHECK – systematically monitor and measure the performance of those plans, to identify opportunities to improve and eliminate risks which affect the business’s ability to deliver intended products or services
• ACT – take action to mitigate the risks or realise the opportunities, and feed the learning back into the planned arrangements, supporting continuous improvement

A management system should be developed so it is specific to a business’s own needs, addressing business risk and realising opportunity for growth and improvement.

ISO is the International Standardisation Organisation.

Membership of ISO is comprised of 163 national standards bodies. They develop and publish International Standards, relating to correct governance and diligence in business and industry. There are more than 21,000 international standards on subjects ranging from “Sustainable and traceable cocoa beans” to “Crisis management of water utilities”.

The most well-known and commonly used of these standards are IS09001, ISO14001 & ISO45001. They prescribe what businesses should have in place to demonstrate sound management of their business and achieve continual improvement in quality, environmental and health and safety matters respectively. As with all ISO standards, they are developed by consensus from member bodies and, therefore, offer the benefit of global management experience and good practice. They can be utilised and followed by any organisation regardless of its size, product, service, sector or location.

By prescribing these best-practice arrangements, the standards set out a framework for compliance. They are effectively rule books for business!

A business will achieve certification by satisfying two key principles.

• Firstly, its management system must cover all of the standards’ requirements – so your “user manual” must provide instructions to satisfy the rules!
• Secondly, the business must then conduct its day-to-day business in compliance with the management systems – it must follow its own user manual.

Compliance with these two principles is verified by an external, independent audit company, which will confer certification upon successful completion of the audits.

Operating a certificated management system can generate many benefits to your business, including:

• Reducing potential risks of injury, illness or occupational harm to employees and others;
• Reducing potential for operations to create pollution or environmental harm;
• Reducing potential risks to business operations, such as delivery of non-conforming product or services;
• Ensuring goods and services provided are consistent;
• Demonstrating commitment to providing existing and potential clients with a first-class, reliable service;
• Enabling continuous improvement; making the business potentially more successful and sustainable; and
• Improving reputation, potentially offering competitive advantage over competitors and increasing market-share.

Yes; you do.

Part of your legal duty as an employer is to provide information, instruction and training that allows everyone to know how to work safely and without risk to their health. This duty extends to contractors and self-employed people.

There are certain statutory requirements relating to providing training, and additional training requirements will vary depending on the type of work you do. However, it is your responsibility to ensure the training needs are identified and suitable training is provided.

Health and safety training should take place during working hours and must be free for employees. Thrive can help you plan, source and deliver training, but you can often provide effective training in-house. Staff will also need extra training if you get new equipment or your working practices change.

Perhaps more importantly, consider what will happen if you don’t train them and they stay?

There are many forms of mandatory training you must provide if certain hazards are present in your workplace. However, the type of training you provide is fundamentally linked to your overall duty to conduct risk assessments and determine appropriate control measures. Providing adequate training forms part of your strategy to control risk in the workplace.

For low-risk businesses, providing simple information or instruction is likely to be adequate. However, in higher-risk workplaces, more in-depth training is often required.

As a starting point, you need to be sure that everyone has sufficient knowledge of:

• hazards (things that could cause them harm)
• risks (the chances of that harm occurring)
• measures in place to deal with those hazards and risks
• how to follow any emergency procedures

You must also consider individuals and groups who will have varying training needs. For example, new recruits, people changing jobs or taking on extra responsibilities, vulnerable people, young employees and health and safety representatives will all need different knowledge and competence.

Periodic renewal and refresher training is also required. Keeping records of initial training will often help you decide if and when refresher training is needed.

Here at Thrive, we can help you with all of this. Don’t suffer in silence. Get in touch, and you’ll be pleasantly surprised how much easier we make it for you.