GOSHA

Click here if you would like to carry out a H&S management systems self assessment

The above form is an interactive PDF document that can be submitted for evaluation.

Managing health and safety is no different from managing any other aspect of your business.

You need to:

• Set a clear policy for health and safety
• Organise your staff for managing health and safety
• Plan for health and safety by setting targets and objectives, identifying hazards, assessing risks and establishing standards against which you can measure your performance
• Measure your health and safety performance in just the same way that you already measure production or sales
• Periodically audit and review how well you are doing so that you can decide how to improve.

You need to put one in place. Health and safety law requires you to have a health and safety Policy as well as appropriate arrangements for Planning, Organising, Controlling, Monitoring and Reviewing the health and safety precautions that you are required by law to have in place. You can use the self-assessment checklist below to help you decide what you need to do.

If you have a safety management system to a recognised standard such as OHSAS 18001 or BS 8800:2004 you can demonstrate that you have a safety management system by producing documented evidence, such as a record of an audit verifying that that the requirements of the standard are being met.

No. You can demonstrate it in other ways provided you are able to show that you have the essential elements of a safety management system in place.

If you are already having your safety management system audited by competent auditors – who may be from your own staff or external auditors – then an audit report showing that the essential elements of a safety management system are present would be sufficient. It is not necessary for
you to show that your safety management system is perfect or best in class.

You can use the self assessment checklist below to help. It is unlikely that any one person in your business will be able to answer all the questions. You will need to involve your management team and consult your workforce, including any employee and safety representatives, when you answer the questions.

Of course, simply having a safety management system in place does not guarantee success in managing health and safety. Nor does it mean you are complying with all requirements of health and safety law. Everything depends on how your safety management system operates in practice and that will depend on many factors including: management leadership; effective implementation of safety processes and procedures; continuously improving assessment of hazard and risks, followed by enhanced controls; use of communication and consultation processes that develop ownership at all levels in the business: and all these supported by monitoring, review and improvement of the systems.

You can benchmark yourselves against other employers using the Health and Safety Performance Indicator for small and medium size enterprises. This is available free of charge at the Business Link website (www.businesslink.gov.uk/). See web page: www.hspi.infoexchange. com. You can use it to see how well you are doing compared with other businesses in your industry as well as to check your own progress over time. You put in your own information by answering some simple questions. This takes about 15 minutes. The answers you give remain anonymous and confidential. Nobody else can see your results. But you can see the collective results for all businesses using the indicator and compare your own score with the rest
of your industry.

As with any business system it takes time to build a successful health and safety management system and then to fine-tune it so that it continues to deliver satisfactory standards of health and safety at work. You can use the performance indicator to see where you are now and to check your progress at appropriate intervals.

You can assess your own health and safety management system using the following self assessment checklist.

Click here if you would like to carry out a H&S management systems self assessment