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People have the right to return home from work safe and sound.

Employers should recognise the benefits of reducing incidents and ill health among their workers, and should be aware of the financial costs and other reasons to aim for, and maintain, good standards of health and safety.

The personal costs of work related injury and ill health can be devastating. Life is never the same again for those people left behind after a work-related death, or for those looking after someone with a long-term work related illness or serious injury.

Managing health and safety risks in a sensible way protects your business, your employees, the families and yourself.

Good health and safety management benefits a business because it can bring a reduction in work place injuries and work related ill health, it can give improved productivity, and morale leading to a happier, healthier workforce.

Good health and safety management helps reduce sickness payments and the possible recruitment/training costs for replacement workers, it reduces the loss of output resulting from experienced and competent workers being absent from work. It may also reduce the risk of damage to machinery, buildings and product which can result in longer life for equipment and machinery.

There is also less risk of enforcement notices and actions from the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) and associated costs, for example, the cost of dealing with an incident and/or fines which can increase the risk of damage to the reputation of the business.

The financial cost of employing a dedicated health and safety manager for your individual business may be considered expensive but there are other solutions –have you looked at the health and safety risks within your workplace and identified how to overcome any possible incident? Have you written a health and safety policy and made your employees aware of it? Are your staff trained correctly to work safely? Have you thought of using the services of a health and safety consultant? This relieves the large cost of employing a dedicated member of staff.

If you want to have more information about the role of a health and safety consultant and what experience and knowledge that they could bring to your business contact RSP Safety Services.

Kyla Goodliffe
kyla@rspsafety.co.uk
01733 807779