HSE provides free and essential health and safety material

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) maintains an extensive library of essential guidance documents, leaflets and ACOP’s (Approved Code Of Practice) helping every business fulfill their health and safety requirements.

And even though, there is this vast library of free information from the UK government agency responsible for the encouragement, regulation and enforcement of workplace health, safety and welfare, companies are not fully exploiting this plethora of crucial material, and as a result, accidents are happening.

Why you need to use this information!

Companies and individual directors are prosecuted daily. Prosecuted for failing to deliver health and safety as Legislation requires, and this will only continue to rise, unless companies start to use, to deliver and to support management in disseminating this crucial information out to the entire workforce.

Companies employ good people, but like any information, if your organisations does not use, present or action accurate health and safety information (like what is available from the HSE portal), then workers will continue to use own methods and techniques, increasing risk and a degradation of company standards.

Proof is also essential, as if, the company cannot prove they’ve conveyed health and safety material to prevent harm as legislation requires, then they are still at risk of prosecution.

Were you aware?

To confirm a majority of companies are missing out on exploiting this free and essential advice!. We contacted 25 companies in a variety of areas in the UK, to ask if they had seen and distributed the January 2020, release of the HSE INDG143 Guide to Manual Handling At Work Rev4?

When speaking with the relevant H&S Safety Professional or Managing Director in that company, there was only one, which confirmed they had seen the ‘Rev4 INDG143 Manual Handling At Work Guide’.

Were you aware of this revision? Don’t worry, if your answer is “no I haven’t seen it” or “I have seen it, but done nothing with it yet”.

This article is written to help you understand more on how to deliver more HSE guidance documents, while building the proof all information has been read and understood by all your workers. Increasing company standards and protecting the company and or individual director(s) from prosecution.

4% is ridiculous

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) is a UK government agency responsible for the encouragement, regulation and enforcement of workplace health, safety and welfare, and they provide an extensive library of essential and free information.

In our survey, only 4% of the companies we asked, knew about the free information, and directly used this material to help and support their workforce in working safer.

In summary, only 4% of the companies regularly visited the HSE web pages to download guidelines, leaflets and disseminate new and crucial advice to their workforce. And 96% operate at an increased risk of failing to comply with Manual Handling Regulations.

Statistics

Let us take a quick look at how common manual handling injuries are.

The statistics show in the period 2018/19, 443,000 injuries were reported where a worker was absent for longer than 7 days due to a non fatal injury.

As the statistics reveal, the cost of companies not supplying suitable and sufficient health and safety (as legislation requires),  actually costs more than a simple and easy cure.

When calculating your costs against risk, make sure you include loss of earnings, additional resource (both internal and external), senior management time and any legal bills for defending a claim(s).

Companies not only incur high costs when not managing health and safety as the Law requires, but also risk tarnishing their reputation.

Why the few and not the many?

So why don’t more companies take full advantage of this free and essential information? it surely cannot be cost, as it is all free?

When developing Safety PAL, we spoke with many H&S professionals, company owners, directors and workers who understood the risk, and some who’d been involved in investigating a serious accident. And the common problem was with not being able to easily obtain information, and also in getting it in front of the worker in a timely manner while maintaining busy company operations.

Frontline Solution

It was apparent, we needed to develop a frontline solution, which allowed the H&S advisor or senior manager to get this free and essential information in front of the entire workforce within their current time constraints and budgets.

So that is exactly how we helped deliver a solution for all our clients.

• Solution #1: Streamlining how you source crucial and accurate information, and deliver it to the entire workforce: H&S professionals have the ability to better use their time more productively, and achieve the proof that workers have seen, read and understood health and safety information, increasing workplace culture and company protection.
• Solution #2: Having adequate resource:  Board members have an obligation to provide sufficient resource to deliver health and safety support and training to prevent harm, this solution allows legislation to be achieved without the need to increase internal or external resource. This new business health and safety data is also available for validation in monthly meetings.

A successful solution is achieved by providing full access to all areas of health and safety, and in providing workers direct and filtered information, creating a natural rise of company standards.
Financial benefits also exists, as companies no longer need to employ further resource, as this unique technology is supporting managers in delivering frontline health and safety in an engaging and efficient way.

Fines and prison sentences are at their highest ever, so it is imperative, essential health and safety information is delivered on the frontline, to the entire workforce, preventing harm and building evidence the Body Corporate is doing ‘So Far As Is Reasonably Practicable”.

The Technology

Safety PAL continually develops new tools in order to get closer to our goal of eradicating all workplace accidents, and if the accident is inevitable because of an incompetent worker or contractor, then your health and safety management system, needs prove the worker or contractor was negligent, helping you defend a civil or legal claim.

We earlier referenced the January 2020 Rev 4 release of The Manual Handling At Work INDG143 document, which is freely available to download from the HSE web site. So how have you used this revision to increase workers safety and mitigate company risk?

Clients who use Safety PAL can rest assured, their workforce and contractors automatically receive filtered safety alert / safety news bulletins based on their discipline i.e Manual Handling at Work.

Further to alerts, bulletins and live job information, which are all standard tools in Safety PAL, our clients also have the ability to use in-built media tools to create more engaging safety, health, wellbeing training, inductions and send out direct to employees and contractors – Safety PAL provides a full audit trail.

How to use the revised manual handling guide more effectively:  The below (shortened) video, shows how we use technology to get essential health and safety information in direct to workers in a more engaging and cost effective way.

What next?

If you’ve recognised a need to work smarter, safer and faster, then I’m happy to give you a personal tour of Safety PAL. Book a tailored product tour here.

If you fully understand the benefits a streamlined health and safety management like Safety PAL will instantly bring to your organisation, and want to strike while the irons hot, then you can get Safety PAL working in your business today, simply click here, complete the form and accept the T&C’s and you will be sent an activation link and logged in instantly.

It takes less than a minute, and Safety PAL is supported by a 100% money back guarantee.

In the meantime, I send you my warm regards.

Please feel free to contact me or any member of the team if you have any further questions.

Karl Spencer

Managing Director Safety PAL