Write a health and safety policy for your business

Your health and safety policy should be a practical guide to how you manage health and safety within your business.

Monitoring your health and safety policy

Ways to check your policy include:

• Where you have set out clear responsibilities for employees, you can check that they have actually carried them out to the required standard.
• You can monitor whether people are following any rules or safe methods set out in the arrangements.
• You can walk around the workplace and check for hazards. Hazards are a sign that you need to improve safety management.
• Records or registers may be included as part of the arrangements section of your policy. Check they are being used and what incidents or comments have been recorded. For example, it is good practice to record workplace safety inspections and training given to staff.

Involve your workers in your policy implementation

You have to consult all your workers on health and safety. You do this by listening and talking to them about:

• health and safety and the work they do
• how risks are controlled
• the best ways of providing information and training

Consultation is a two-way process. Allow staff to raise concerns and influence decisions on the management of health and safety. Your employees are often the best people to understand risks in the workplace. Involving them in making decisions shows them that you take their health and safety seriously.

In a very small business, you might choose to consult your employees directly. Alternatively, you might consult your employees through a health and safety representative. This can be someone who has been chosen by their colleagues or selected by a trade union. As an employer, you cannot decide who will be the representative.

Some of the ways that you can bring the policy statement to your employees' attention are by:

• including it in any employee handbooks
• providing it at induction
• including a copy with the contract of employment
• posting it on your intranet sites
• posting it on notice boards
• making the duties in the policy part of your employees' workplace objectives

See consult your employees on health and safety.