Employers Responsibilities For Health And Safety In The Workplace

The health and safety responsibilities of employers mean being accountable for everyone affected by your business. This doesn’t just mean your staff but anyone on or around your premises and anyone affected by goods or services you sell, including visitors, consumers and potentially other public members.

Some of the most frequently used regulations are as follows:

• The Management Health And Safety At Work Act 1992.
• Employer responsibilities in the workplace require every employer to make a suitable and sufficient assessment of:
• Firstly, there are risks to the health and safety of his employees to which they are exposed while at work.
• Secondly, the risks to the health and safety of persons not in their employment arising out of or in connection with the conduct by them.

These regulations address common factors in workplace accidents, such as the maintenance of the workplace, ventilation, the temperature of indoor workplaces, lighting, cleaning and waste materials, room dimensions and space, and the condition of floors and traffic routes.

Floors and traffic routes should have no holes or slopes or be uneven or slippery and have adequate means of drainage where necessary. They must also be free from obstructions.

The workplace regulations employers’ responsibilities also cover falls or falling objects, washing facilities, escalators doors and gates.

Employers’ responsibilities for health and safety specify that each employer must avoid requiring their employees to undertake any manual handling operations at work which involve a risk of injury. Where it is not reasonably practicable to prevent the need for manual handling, a suitable risk assessment must be carried out of all manual handling operations.

The risk assessment must consider the task’s nature, the load handled, the working environment and individual capabilities.

These specify that work equipment must be suitable, maintained in an efficient state, in efficient working order and a good state of repair, that proper information, instructions and training be provided to employees, and that there is protection against specified risks to health and safety.

An employers’ responsibility includes providing suitable personal protective equipment to employees exposed to risks to their health and safety while at work.

Employers’ responsibilities to employees include making sure the personal protective equipment provided is assessed as being suitable and must be appropriately maintained. The employer must also take all reasonable steps to ensure the correct use of personal protective equipment provided to employees.

HSE employers’ responsibilities when employing five or more employees must also have a written health and safety policy, which the employer must bring to the notice of all employees.

The employer must also ensure the health and safety of persons other than employees who use the premises are protected.

In some instances, health and safety responsibilities have extra rules. You need to take additional steps when taking their needs into account.

Firstly, the health and safety responsibilities of employers arrangements need to take people with disabilities into account and work out how you can accommodate them in emergencies. For example, you need to consider whether your building has step-free access in the event of a fire.

You need to consider special considerations when having young people (under 18 years old) on-site and, for example, taking someone on for work experience.

You also need to carry out another risk assessment if you are dealing with pregnant women to avoid exposing them or their children to unnecessary danger.

Some businesses associated with particular hazards, such as construction or chemical engineering, face extra regulation from HSE.

Contracts manager who forged risk assessment after fatal fall jailed.

A contracts manager falsified the signature on a risk assessment of a roofer who was killed when they fell through a fragile roof.

After pleading guilty to failing to take reasonable care of other persons, under section 7 of the 1974 Health & Safety at Work Act, contrary to section 33(1)(a), the manager pleaded guilty to perverting the course of justice.

The case related to an accident when an employee of the company fell through a fragile roof on which they were working to the floor below, sustaining fatal head injuries.

The contracts manager had the employers duties in health and safety for his employees.

Under Employment Law Health And Safety, the police and the HSE found fundamental breaches of duty on the company’s part and a second company involved in the work.

The investigation found that the employers’ health and safety responsibilities included providing netting, which the contracts manager insisted was unnecessary, could have been taken to make workers safer. Experts in the field assessed the site after the fall and advised that netting was necessary. Another expert in the field stated that it was not challenging to net and that if they had installed it, it would have caught the employee. Experts told investigators that netting would have cost approximately £1,250 to install.

During the investigation, the police examined the manager’s computer and found that they had altered the records to mislead the investigation. They presented a risk assessment document containing the employee’s forged signature.

The company was fined £100,000 and ordered to pay £30,000 in prosecution costs after pleading guilty to Section 2(1) of the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974.

The second company was fined £12,000 and ordered to pay £33,000 in prosecution costs after being found guilty of Regulation 15(2) Construction Design and Management Regulations 2015 following a trial.

Health and Safety Act employers’ responsibilities mean that accountability stops with you and the other directors of your company when it comes to liability for health and safety breaches, so getting things right is essential. The Avensure Health & Safety team are happy to talk to you about employers’ duties in health and safety, the procedures businesses need to have in place and how to start the process, so please get in touch with us if you want to discuss your health and safety needs in more detail.

Please quote your Client Account Number on all correspondence and telephone calls. 24-hour client advice line: 0800 151 2935