It is very easy to forget about the health and safety side of running a business. As an employer and a business owner there are multiple tasks that need doing, the work never stops. However, health and safety cannot be pushed to the back of your to do list. It needs to be one of your top priorities and therefore many business owners turn to health and safety consultants to help reduce the work load.

Health and Safety Consultants are ideal for you to use, especially if you have no health and safety experts working within your company. You may lack the knowledge and experience needed to run your policies and procedures or perhaps it is merely down to lack of time. Whatever the reason is you can greatly benefit by starting with an audit.

Audits are a great way of seeing what is going on in your management and showing if you are currently in compliance with the health and safety legislation. You can discover what areas are lacking, what is working and then discover what action needs to be taken in order to bring you up to compliance.  You can use audits frequently as they are useful for spotting problems before they become serious issues.

What Happens in an Audit?

A professional health and safety expert will come to your premises and conduct the Health and Safety Audit.  They will examine multiple areas such as the company policy, management systems and see who is responsible for the management within your firm and who is considered to be a competent person who is able to advise you n health and safety matters. The audit also looks into:

• Planning – your use of risk assessments
• Procedures you have in place
• Emergency response procedures
• Control and communication
• Training
• Safety meetings
• Reporting accidents and incidents
• Monitoring Attitudes of employees and their awareness
• Attitude and awareness of the management

How do You Benefit?

As a company you can benefit by showing compliance with your health and safety policy. It shows you are working to monitor, review and improve your current management. Additionally you benefit from spotting areas of weakness that need to be improved. By making the necessary changes you reduce the risks and create a safer working environment for everyone at the firm. In return you can be fully prepared for inspections from the HSE, be protected should there be an accident that happened that wasn’t due to your safety failings and improve the costs related to staff accidents and illnesses caused by their work.

Arrange Your Health and Safety Audit Today

Contact Veritas Consulting Health and Safety Consultants if you have no time, are concerned about your compliance with legislation or require a review of your current management systems concerning health and safety. You can request an audit by calling us on 0800 1488 677.

About David Cant

David Cant is a Chartered Safety and Health Practitioner extraordinaire. He has a wealth of Industry experience and is the MD of Veritas Consulting. David also Blogs about Health and Safety here Health and Safety Consultants

His aim is to flavour Health and Safety with integrity, served with a side of humour You can find David on - Twitter and Google also Linkedin