Charlie Patrick, Author at Safesmart

5 Things Every Workplace Risk Assessment Should Include

Posted on June 6, 2025June 6, 2025 by Charlie Patrick

Risk assessments play a vital role in keeping your workplace safe and are an essential pillar of an effective health and safety strategy, whichever industry you are in. Identifying and managing your workplace risks regularly enables you to protect your employees by mitigating the hazards and supplying the necessary training, whilst also ensuring you remain compliant. However, many risk assessments fall short due to missing or skimming past some of the most crucial elements.

So, to help you strengthen your processes, here are five essential components every workplace risk assessment should include.

1. Clear Identification of Hazards

The first step of any risk assessment is to thoroughly identify all the potential hazards across the workplace. This includes all physical, ergonomic, or long-term hazards, many which may not be immediately obvious. This creates a clear outlay of the risks, so that you can work towards a plan to mitigate them effectively.

During your assessments, you should also consider the impact of any changes occurring throughout your workday, including any lighting, weather, personnel or processes that may differ. Reviewing your incident reports regularly can also help reveal common health and safety risks and failings.

2. Who is at risk?

When working towards achieving safer workplace practices, understanding who might be affected by each hazard is crucial in order to pinpoint how to best protect the individuals. This includes not only employees but also contractors, visitors, and even members of the public – depending on your workplace layout and operations.

This allows you to adjust the processes according to their level of experience and knowledge via a range of techniques, whether that be improving your staff training, moving staff around, or even changing the processes entirely. This also opens up the opportunity to spot developing patterns, thereby potentially preventing any individuals from being overexposed to hazards.

3. Implementing Control Measures

With the vulnerabilities now identified, you must evaluate the level of risk each hazard presents and identify all existing control measures. Commonly this can be done through a rating system such as a risk matrix/register, to easily prioritise the most dangerous areas. Determine if the control measures are adequate or if further action is required to bolster your health and safety practices to reduce the risks.

In this step, it is also crucial to consider how hazards may overlap and interact with each other, as often long-term risks and fatigue can increase the chances of a health and safety failing.

When implementing mitigation techniques, it is important to remember the hierarchy of controls, providing a guide to the most effective strategies:

Elimination – Removing the hazard completely
Substitution – Replacing the process or hazard with a safer alternative
Engineering Controls – Changing the systems to minimise risk exposure
Administrative Controls – Changing practices to reduce the potential risk
PPE – Directly protecting the individual from the risk

4. Employee Involvement and Consultation

No one knows your workplace quite like your staff, as interacting with different parts of their working environment day in day out gives them a unique perspective and understanding of potential health and safety issues and concerns. Co-operating with your employees during a risk assessment is crucial to revealing the overall picture, helping you be aware of hazards that may have otherwise gone unnoticed whilst also enhancing your health and safety culture – making staff feel heard and valued.

During this step, it is also vital that you ensure all staff are up to date with the latest emergency plans and processes to verify their safety and others in the event of an emergency.

5. Introducing a Review Schedule and Documenting

Finally, workplace risk assessments are not one-off exercises. They should be living documents, updated and reviewed whenever there are changes in procedures, equipment or personnel, with significant changes demanding a full re-assessment. With this in mind, scheduled review intervals are essential to upkeep a safe workplace. Depending on your working environment and the risks involved these timescales can fluctuate, being unique to your organisation, generally sitting between every quarter to biannual reviews

On top of a regular review cycle, make sure you are thoroughly documenting your finding. This is not only good practice, but it’s a legal requirement across the UK. A clear and structured record shows that the risk assessment was completed properly and outlines who is responsible for actions and their deadlines.

Documenting and scheduling reviews is often made easier through the use of standardised templates, helping your reviews to meet the same criteria. This can be further aided by risk assessment software to maintain consistency and keep within deadlines.

Conclusion

Workplace risk assessments are a fundamental part of your health and safety management, but their requirements can be blurry, so completing them correctly is vital to ensure the safety of your work premises. By ensuring your assessment includes these five key elements, you will create a strong foundation for a safer and more compliant workplace. Whilst the inclusion of staff into your practices will improve your workplace’s safety culture, ultimately creating a much safer working environment for everyone.

Health and Safety Considerations for Lone Working

Posted on January 27, 2025January 27, 2025 by Charlie Patrick

Lone working is when employees work in isolation without direct supervision, and is increasingly common in various industries. But, whilst it offers more flexibility and autonomy for workers, it also presents a unique set of health and safety challenges.

Here is a comprehensive guide to understanding and addressing these considerations:

Risk Assessment

Conducting a thorough risk assessment is a crucial first step in ensuring the safety of lone workers. Identifying all potential hazards such as equipment malfunction, health emergencies, or even the risk of violence. Doing so, Enables you to assess the severity of these risks and prioritise them to develop strategies to effectively eliminate them, creating a safer work environment.

Training and Awareness

To prepare individuals for lone working, you must first ensure that they have thorough training on the correct safety procedures, emergency responses, and the proper use of any equipment they will be using to properly carry out their job.

After following a comprehensive training plan, lone workers should be able to recognise potential hazards and know how to respond effectively. Afterwards, regular refresher training can help to keep their safety knowledge up-to-date, reminding them of the potential risks they may face.

Access to Communication

When someone is working on their own, communication is extremely important. It is crucial to establish robust communication systems, including regular check-ins by phone (or other instant communication devices), GPS tracking, or even emergency alert systems. Ensuring that lone workers can quickly and easily call for help in the event of an emergency is crucial to mitigating the risks.

Emergency Procedures

In more detail, you should clearly define emergency procedures which are tailored to lone working scenarios. This includes knowing who to contact, how to access emergency services, and the location of first aid kits. Having a clearly established and well-practiced emergency plan can make all the difference in a critical situation.

A Safe Working Environment

Ensure the working environment is safe and secure for lone workers. This includes keeping the workplace brightly lit, maintaining secure access points, and confirming all vehicles and work equipment are in good working condition. Regular inspections and maintenance can prevent breakdowns or accidents, and create a safer workplace.

Health and Psychological Support

You should keep on top of the health and well-being of lone workers, especially those in physically or mentally demanding roles. Often, lone working can lead to feelings of isolation or stress, and providing access to psychological support, such as counselling services or peer support groups, can help address and prevent these issues.

Encouraging regular social interaction, even if virtual, can also reduce feelings of isolation. For physical wellbeing, regular health check-ups can identify potential issues before they develop into anything more serious.

Legal and Regulatory Compliance

You should always ensure that you are fully compliant with health and safety regulations. This includes understanding your legal obligations as an employer, keeping up with all changes in legislation, and ensuring that all safety measures meet or exceed regulatory standards.

Remember, non-compliance can both jeopardise worker safety and lead to serious legal repercussions.

Encouraging Feedback

You should encourage regular feedback from lone workers to identify any areas of concern. Not only will this help them feel valued, but it will allow you to implement any improvements based on their experiences, helping to create a safer work environment. Also, remember to regularly review and update safety protocols to ensure that they remain effective.

By addressing all these health and safety considerations, you can ultimately create a safer and more supportive environment for lone workers in your organisation. Prioritising their wellbeing not only enhances productivity, but also demonstrates a clear commitment to their overall safety and security.

Winter Safety: Keeping Your Workplace Safe

Posted on December 9, 2024December 9, 2024 by Charlie Patrick

With Winter fast approaching, how is the unpredictable weather impacting your workplace safety? From an increase in slips and trips from icy walkways to a lack of focus caused by inadequate clothing in the cold, keeping your employees safe this winter can be challenging.

It is crucial to plan ahead and foresee the potential risks that can impact your working safety, therefore we will now dive into some of the key things to look out for to ensure your workplace’s safety this winter.

Visibility

With darker and longer nights becoming the norm, it is vital that you ensure good visibility around your workplace. This will help you to avoid any slips and trips from poor lighting, or injuries from not knowing someone else is around.

So to avoid these situations, keep your site well-lit (especially around walkways), so people can easily identify any hazards in their paths, and also introduce high-visibility clothing if needed, to ensure that everyone can be seen – this is particularly important when working with machinery.

But also make sure you don’t overlook low-traffic areas, as often these can be the most dangerous. And if you need to, shadow colleagues to ensure that you are keeping your workforce safe throughout the day.

Changing Weather

In winter the weather is often unpredictable, making it challenging to upkeep a safe workplace, quickly jumping between icy winds, sudden downpours and freezing temperatures. Therefore, ensure that you evaluate the working environment carefully before carrying out any tasks. Consider whether the conditions and your personnel’s experience are adequate to safely complete the tasks at hand, or if there are better times to take on those riskier tasks eg. such as working at heights or during cold nights.

To combat the rainy weather, it is also critical to introduce anti-slip flooring, particularly around doorways as wet floors are often a recipe for slips, regardless of the wider conditions.

Ice and Dropping Temperatures

Arguably the most dangerous risk that Winter brings to your safety is ice and sub-zero temperatures, which quickly develop into new hazards and risks across your workplace. If these are not correctly dealt with, they can harm your working safety. However, one of the most effective ways of dealing with the dropping temperatures is through pre-emptive action.

During the colder months, staying on top of the upcoming weather forecast is crucial to safely planning out what your workplace needs in order to keep safe this Winter. So when low temperatures are forecast, make sure to grit your walkways the day before and ensure that all of your walkways are as clean and dry as possible. This gives you the best chance to avoid any icy or slippery floors, helping you fight back against any slips and trips – which is the leading cause of workplace injury.

Another crucial step to keeping your employees safe is ensuring that they are well-dressed to deal with the temperatures, especially when working for long periods outside. This can be done by encouraging them to keep warm and take regular breaks inside when it is especially cold.

Finally, when dealing with ice and snow you should encourage people to actively think about their winter safety. Whether it’s avoiding shortcuts off the gritted pathways, planning ahead to prevent rushing around, or even considering the best times for each task, to keep them as safe as possible.

Communication

But the final, most powerful tool you have when it comes to health and safety is communication. Regularly asking your employees, or even shadowing them for a while will potentially give you a new perspective on the safety of your workplace. Ensuring that they feel safe and at a comfortable temperature throughout the day is also crucial to workplace morale and safety; helping them stay focused and always remain health and safety conscious.

To conclude, keeping your staff safe throughout the winter should be critical to all businesses. Although it does come with its unique set of challenges, with the correct pre-planning and monitoring, these actions will significantly improve your workplace safety, aiding your Risk Assessments and checks to ensure you keep your employees safe this Winter.

The Importance of PPE in Your Workplace

Posted on August 16, 2024August 16, 2024 by Charlie Patrick

PPE plays a vital role in keeping people safe at work by protecting the individual from risks that can’t be eliminated through standard risk mitigation. However, this makes it crucial to understand when and where it is needed to ensure your organisation’s health and safety practices are up to standard. So, let’s dive into it.

What is PPE?

First, let’s cover the basics: Personal Protective Equipment – often referred to as PPE, is all equipment intended to be used by a person at work to protect them from the risks present in their working environment.

This includes everything protecting you from hazards, such as high-vis clothing for conditions with poor visibility, to harnesses protecting you when working at height; no matter the severity of the risks it’s protecting you from.

When must PPE be used?

PPE must be used to ensure that any remaining risks/hazards, identified in your risk assessments, are adequately controlled, and should only be used when the risks cannot be eliminated by other means. This is due to the other means of risk mitigation being safer and more effective.

If you can avoid or eliminate the risks directly, this creates a much safer environment than applying protective measures; making PPE most suitable as a ‘last resort’ option. This is also reinforced by the HSE placing it last in its hierarchy of controls:

“Elimination – physically remove the hazard

Substitution – replace the hazard

Engineering controls – isolate people from the hazard

Administrative controls – change the way people work

PPE – protect the worker with personal protective equipment”

This makes the use of PPE necessary in high-risk environments such as construction sites, where for example, falling objects and moving machinery can’t be eliminated as a risk, making a hard hat, high-vis clothing and steel-capped shoes the minimum requirement.

What does the legislation say?

The use of PPE is covered in many different laws and regulations, however the main two safety acts are the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 (HSWA), and the Personal Protective Equipment at Work Regulations 1992 (PPER).

The HSWA prioritises creating a safe environment for your staff with risk mitigation and training, highlighting your duty to provide the necessary equipment and the training/knowledge to achieve this. Whilst the PPER goes into more detail with the requirements:

“Every employer shall ensure that suitable personal protective equipment is provided to his employees who may be exposed to a risk to their health or safety while at work except where and to the extent that such risk has been adequately controlled by other means which are equally or more effective.” – PPER 4.1

This regulation specifies the employers’ duty to provide suitable PPE to protect the employees when any risks are unavoidable and pose a present health and safety hazard.

However, it is crucial for the equipment to be in good working condition, and critical that the staff is trained to safely assess and use the provided equipment. This is because misuse of PPE results in thousands of injuries across the UK every year.

The Importance of PPE

PPE is the crucial last step in your organisation’s health and safety, protecting from the remaining hazards in your workplace to ensure that your staff remain safe. With the right training and maintenance, PPE provides effective protection to help prevent incidents and encourage a safer working environment.

How To Prevent The Most Common Workplace Hazards

Posted on June 27, 2024June 27, 2024 by Charlie Patrick

The working environment is constantly evolving, making it challenging to keep on top of health and safety. But with reports showing that almost 4 million working days are lost because of injuries every year in the UK, the presence of these common workplace hazards are clear.

Although every workplace has its own unique set of hazards, here are the most common workplace hazards that are likely lurking in your environment.

Slips, Trips and Falls

Accounting for almost a third (32%) of all injuries in 2023, slips, trips and falls are the most common cause of workplace injury in the UK, despite being one of the simpler hazards to spot and prevent.

One of the key preventative measures is ensuring good visibility. You should make sure that everyone can clearly see their path ahead, allowing them to double-check for any hazards eg. wet surfaces, objects in the way, uneven ground or steps. Areas should also be well-lit with walkways kept clear and dry, therefore ensuring that the path ahead can be seen.

It is also important to highlight any ‘problem areas’ to alert others to be more attentive. Some common methods to highlight these areas are:

Signs – ‘Wet floor’ signs or ‘Caution when wet’ signs are some of the most widely used options.
Highlighting steps – often bright grip tape is placed on ledges to highlight the elevation change to prevent trips.
Slip-resistant flooring – Commonly placed near entrances to stop wet walkways from becoming a hazard.

Fire Hazards

Fires remain a persistent and common hazard to businesses across the country, with a reported 22,000 workplace fires every year. To combat this, regular employee training is a necessity, and this can be done as a group session or online via a fire safety training course. Afterwards, taking this training periodically will refresh your employees’ knowledge.

It is also necessary to ensure that countermeasures are accounted for in case of a fire breaking out. This means checking your fire alarms and fire extinguishers regularly for damage, ensuring they are unobstructed and functional. Additionally, an evacuation plan should be in place, ensuring that everybody has a safe route out of the building – with any assistance necessary if needed.

Electrical Hazards

Often forgotten, electrical hazards can pose a huge risk to your workplace safety if not regularly maintained. Shorting out circuits could potentially cause safety systems to fail, thereby increasing the risk of fires.

Simple yet regular checks are often the best way to keep on top of electrical risks, with formal maintenance and inspections carried out by a professional when necessary. Some key areas to check regularly are:

Cables – are they all intact and insulated correctly, with no signs of damage?
Outlets – are they in good condition and properly grounded?
Overloading – are the outlets overloaded?

Ergonomic Hazards

Ergonomics often get disregarded when it comes to health and safety, but with almost half a million workers suffering from work-related musculoskeletal disorders every year in the UK, their importance is clear. Despite this high prevalence, it is one of the easier risks to eliminate.

Increasing awareness is the most common method to mitigate the hazards in the workplace, as employees can take more responsibility of their own workspace and adjust it accordingly. The best way to raise awareness among your staff is through training. A short eLearning course can effectively cover everything they need to know, and also gives you a record of when that was last completed.

Following on from the training, staff will then need to alter their workspaces to suit. This will involve adjusting everything from screen height for office workers to introducing equipment for heavy lifting for the more active sectors. Accommodating these changes will eliminate the ergonomic hazards, helping you prevent any injuries occurring because of poor ergonomics.

By identifying and eliminating these common workplace hazards, it can massively benefit both your business and your employees. This will help you to create a much safer and more efficient working environment, which will boost not only your business’s productivity but also its reputation. These implementations can all take place whilst also improving your staff’s morale and well-being by taking the ‘edge’ off your working environment; making it feel safer, whilst reducing staff injury and ill-health.

Sources:

HSE (2023) ‘Health and Safety at work statistics’. Available at: https://www.hse.gov.uk/statistics/overview.htm (Accessed: 27/06/2024)

Dorset Fire Protection (2023) ‘Common Causes of Workplace Fires’. Available at: https://dorsetfireprotection.co.uk/common-causes-workplace-fires/ (Accessed: 27/06/2024)

How To Build An Online Training Course

Posted on June 4, 2024August 16, 2024 by Charlie Patrick

Building an online training course can be a fantastic way to deliver training to your staff, allowing you to personalise and customise the learning experience, to ensure that all users take in all necessary information. However, that being said it is crucial to prepare properly before creating any eLearning course, to ensure that your courses deliver the required lessons. As often jumping straight into the creation phase, will result in missing content and ultimately a lower-quality course.

1. Course Objectives

Establishing what you want to teach is the first and the most crucial aspect of building an eLearning course. This ensures that the course covers all the crucial lessons that you need to teach, whilst allowing you to plan out how to best achieve this.

Start by setting the objectives of the course, these don’t have to be listed at the start of the course, but it can be helpful to establish to the learners what the key takeaways are. So what are the key lessons you are covering?

Filling in gaps of knowledge?
Teaching a user how to use something?
Where are health and safety measures required?
Site specific considerations/information?

2. Research

Research is the next important step in creating your own eLearning course. As before you start to piece together your course, you need to make sure that what you are teaching is correct. This will ensure that you fully understand the course content and iron out any mistakes/gaps in your knowledge to make sure that your training is as high quality as possible.

This step may not be necessary depending on the course content, so use your discretion. However, even if you are experienced in the subject at hand, finding credible sources to back up your statements only adds to the validity of your course, whilst ensuring that your learners can trust what they’re being taught.

3. Audience and Format

When building your own online training course it provides an unmatched opportunity to tailor the content and format to your audience. This will also help condense the course, helping you to avoid being that dreaded training course that is too drawn out for its own good. So factoring in your audience and altering the content and format to suit, is key to avoiding this and build a high-quality condensed training course.

This will also allow you to change the format to best suit their training needs. For example, if your online training course is primarily for an experienced workforce, then you can tailor the content to be more ‘recap-focused’, to keep their training as concise and engaging as possible. However this therefore wouldn’t be as suitable for new starters, potentially lacking the detail required to fill in any gaps, highlighting why considering your course audience is crucial to ensuring that it delivers on the objectives.

4. Course Outline

Once you have your foundations of the content, it is key to plan out an outline for your course. This will help you determine the best way to deliver the lessons to get your point across.

Start out by placing the key slides into your Training Course Creator tool and reorder them until they sit logically – covering all the key points in the order in which they should be covered. This will ensure that your course doesn’t bounce between topics to often and keeps the learning organised into digestible sections.

5. Content

Once you have your key slides in order, its now time to fill out the bulk of the course. This is where you compile all of the previous steps and complete the course with all of the relevant content.

Be sure to keep this in-line with your audience and formatted to suit, to create the best learning experience. Attaching any media, information sources and site-specific knowledge where necessary. This will also help keep the course engaging, which is critical to creating the best learning environment.

6. Quiz Questions and Types (Knowledge Checks)

With the bulk of the online training course now built, you can now test your learner’s knowledge. This is crucial to ensure that they have learnt the course content and meet the level of knowledge required to pass the course.

There are many ways in which questions can be integrated into the course, so make sure to consider the options to find the most appropriate fit. This means considering:

How many questions are needed?
How are the questions going to be spaced out?
- Is one big block appropriate?
- Do you space them out evenly?
- Are short ‘Knowledge Checks’ the best fit?
What question types are you using?
- Multiple choice
- Drag and Drop
- Sortable lists
What are the key topics to test for?

7. Quality Checks

Finally, you need to check the quality of the course, ensuring that it works as intended, with no errors throughout the course, whether that is a weird glitch in the test questions or certificates not being awarded properly. This is also where you can refer back to the course objectives you set in the earlier steps, ensuring that the training delivers on its goals and has no content missing or being skimmed over.

During this step it is also important to check for any grammatical or spelling errors as well as formatting errors – are the pictures high quality? Are linked videos running smoothly? Is there any clipping or weird text placement?

Conclusion

Overall, there are many steps that go into the creation, research and formatting of an engaging high-quality training course. But these steps are crucial to ensuring the course lives up to the many benefits of custom courses and make it worth the added effort. When done correctly creating an eLearning course provides a unique learning opportunity and will enhance your training standard.

Introducing ‘Help Desk’ – our latest Smartlog® module

Posted on April 17, 2024April 17, 2024 by Charlie Patrick

We are pleased to announce the release of a new Help Desk facility in Smartlog®.

The new help desk module allows your users to raise tickets regarding any premises issues in your
organisation. Live tickets can be tracked, updated and then resolved within Smartlog and through
immediate email notifications – including all related costs and time spent fixing the issue.

Help Desk provides you with the following abilities:

Create custom ticket categories
Any user can raise a ticket, and custom categories can be created. All created tickets are
automatically categorised and can be immediately assigned to the responsible user to resolve.

Set time-bound priority levels
You can set custom priority levels for your tickets, determining exactly the length of time the ticket requires to be resolved. This enables your SLAs with your contractors to be automatically built-in,
for example.

Keep a track of all costs
You can input and track all costs related to a ticket, and you can also track the exact time spent
resolving the ticket. Also, anyone working on the ticket can update it anytime with their detailed
costs.

Live email updates
From the raising of a ticket, during its resolution, and to its closing, email notifications are sent to
all users involved in the ticket to keep everyone updated on exactly what is going on.

This module is completely free to all our customers who use the full version of Smartlog. and is
immediately available for Company Admins to use.

To book a demo of ‘Help Desk’ for your organisation or to request more information about Smartlog, visit our contact page or send us your query to info@safesmart.co.uk

The Benefits of eLearning

Posted on March 25, 2024April 16, 2024 by Charlie Patrick

Training is a crucial part of any business’s health and safety, with it being critical to ensuring that everyone knows the dos and don’ts within their workplace – everything from Asbestos Awareness to Fire Safety courses. However, managing training can often be a time-consuming and stressful task, and businesses often don’t take the time to consider other options. So here are the 5 benefits of eLearning to help you streamline your training and widen your perspective.

Flexible Learning

One of the advantages of eLearning is its flexibility in both location and timing. Gone are the days of trying to schedule training with everyone’s calendars to make sure they can all attend one session at a set location.

eLearning allows you to bypass this and get your staff to learn at a time which suits them. Whether that’s on their phone/tablet as they are on the go or in the office on their computer, online training is completely flexible, all you need is a device and internet access.

Seamless Management

Managing training can be challenging and time intensive, lining up schedules, organising the training and tracking who has done what and when. But eLearning can streamline this process, with fast insights into your organisation’s training.

With the ability to quickly view who has completed their courses and what’s overdue and upcoming, our eLearning module will also ensure that no training is missed. With weekly email reminders for overdue training and auto-assign features, you can ensure that your training doesn’t go past its expiry date.

Personalised Learning

Another great benefit of eLearning comes from the individual aspects of it, allowing for personalised and unique learning. From choosing what to assign to everybody individually to tailoring their courses specifically to their department/site using a Training Course Creator tool.

Being digital, eLearning also provides a unique learning opportunity, allowing you to use videos and graphics easily to learn and even interactive content, which can provide immediate feedback to the user, helping them learn faster.

Reduced Costs

In-Person training is expensive with many factors affecting the price, from the trainers’ day rate, the travel costs involved, time lost and even the building costs for the room.

However, due to the nature of online training, you can cut these costs down by going digital, having no travel or hire costs and having training for unlimited users all for one price. Making eLearning a lot more affordable for businesses especially when the change in admin work is accounted for.

Bite-sized Learning

Splitting up training time is crucial to remain focussed and ensure the best learning environment. This is especially important when you are covering serious topics as is normally found within workplace training.

This benefits eLearning greatly as you can easily split up your training into bite-sized chunks, either one course at a time or pausing halfway through to come back to it later.

Overall considering the swap to eLearning can be beneficial for most businesses, helping you to streamline your training process whilst reducing costs, removing the hassle, and improving your staff’s learning experience.

7 Tips to work safely with height

Posted on February 12, 2024February 12, 2024 by Charlie Patrick

Working at height can be extremely dangerous when not safely monitored and according to the HSE there are over 40,000 injuries in the UK every year. So today we will cover 7 crucial tips to ensure you follow safe practices when working at height, covering everything from equipment to common mistakes.

1. Assess the risks

When working at height it is crucial to assess the task(s) at hand and ensure that it is safe to proceed before putting yourself at any risk. This may not have to be a formal assessment if your workplace has a valid assessment in place. The key things to check in your assessment are:

– The height of the task – how much risk does that place on the job?

– The duration and frequency of the job – if it is a long task consider breaking it up into manageable chunks. And if it is a frequent job consider a more thorough assessment.

– The condition of the equipment and surfaces – ensure you have the necessary equipment in good condition and the surfaces you will be working on are safe and dry to avoid slips.

2. Is it the appropriate time?

To reduce the risk of working with height consider if there is a better time to complete the tasks and if possible, can the job be avoided with a workaround from the ground? If the task is necessary, then take into account the factors that increase the risk.

This could be the training of the person carrying out the job, is there someone more experienced? Or the weather conditions and time of day, is there a quieter time of day or lower-risk conditions to work in?

3. Have you got the correct training?

Training and knowledge are crucial elements in keeping safe when working at height, so ensure that you have the appropriate training before putting yourself at risk. Training can be given in many forms, from direct 1 on 1 training to online training, depending on your needs.

Make sure you are trained well and have covered the relevant topics for the tasks you may encounter, some key topics include:

– The use of ladders

– Selecting and using the correct equipment/PPE

– Using MEWP’s (Mobile Elevator Working Platforms)

– Responsibilities when working at height

– The laws and regulations

4. Using the correct equipment

Ensuring the correct preventative measures are in place is crucial to minimizing the risks. This involves ensuring the correct CPE (Collective Protective Equipment) is in place and the appropriate PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) is used when necessary.

Some common examples of CPE include guard rails, scaffolding, and scissor lifts. Common examples of PPE include safety harnesses, a helmet and safety restraints.

Not only is having the correct equipment and knowing how to use it safely crucial, but it is also important that it is all in good condition. Making regular equipment checks vital to safe working procedures.

5. Safety on Ladders

Ladders are often thought of as the go-to equipment when working at height due to their simple appearance. However, the risks they can carry are often underestimated, as they have been reported to be responsible for up to 40% of the injuries caused by falls from height.

So, despite their ‘simple to use’ appearance make sure you know how to use them correctly, here are some key mistakes to avoid:

– Don’t rest them on weak surfaces

– Don’t place them near anything that could push the ladder, such as windows and doors.

– Place them on flat and level ground, ensuring that the ground is dry.

– Ensure that the ladder is roughly placed at a 75-degree angle, this increases its stability.

6. Do’s and don’ts when working with height

Within any field, it is important to know the ins and outs of what you should and shouldn’t do, so here are some quickfire points to make sure you keep safe when working at height:

Do:

– Keep 3 points of contact on the ladder and don’t overreach on them.

– Ensure you aren’t at the very top, as this will make the ladder unstable.

– Check your equipment before use

Don’t:

– Overload the ladder or equipment you are using

– Overreach or lean over any railings/ladders

– Use ladders/equipment without training

7. Review your processes

Even if you don’t frequently work from height, a simple review of your processes can be beneficial to decrease the likelihood of injury through falls. This can be formal or on the fly, but for more frequent use it is important to review your processes regularly.

As part of your review, you need to consider if the processes you currently follow are still appropriate and compliant with the law. For example, if you have recently changed part of your environment or the factors are weather-dependent, make sure you have the correct PPE/CPE available if necessary and in good condition. Or if you don’t currently use anything more than a ladder, review if another machine may be more suitable and safer, such as a scissor lift. It’s also important to take training into account within these reviews.

References

HSE (2023) ‘Falls From Height’. Available at: https://www.hse.gov.uk/food/falls.htm (Accessed: 9/2/24)

HSE (2023) ‘Health and Safety Summary Statistics 2022/2023’. Available at: https://www.hse.gov.uk/statistics/overview.htm (Accessed: 9/2/24)

What is a Workplace Inspection?

Posted on January 17, 2024January 17, 2024 by Charlie Patrick

A Workplace Inspection is the process of acutely examining the workplace to identify hazards and ensure that all health and safety standards are met. This then allows you to ensure that your workplace is safe and compliant and allows you to mitigate/eliminate the remaining risks.

Under the Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999, every employer must make a suitable and sufficient assessment of both the risks to the health and safety of their employees that they encounter while at work, and the risks to the people not under employment.

What are the different types of inspections?

Workplace inspections can be either formal or informal, with the informal inspections being quick checks. There are four types of formal inspections, and they are:

Safety surveys – a general inspection of high-risk areas, activities, or processes
Safety Tours – a general inspection of the whole workplace
Safety Sampling – a systematic sampling approach of the high-risk areas, activities, or processes
Incident/accident inspections – After an incident has occurred (near miss, injury, or fatality) a full inspection of the cause and prevention. (this may need to be reported to the relevant health and safety authority)

Who should complete the workplace inspection?

A formal inspection of the workplace should be carried out by multiple people ranging from health and safety specialists/committee members to supervisors/managers. This will often require you to bring in an external health and safety expert to ensure nothing is missed.

The HSE states that for formal inspections “Union-appointed health and safety representatives can inspect the workplace. They have to give reasonable notice in writing when they intend to carry out a formal inspection of the workplace, and have not inspected it in the previous three months”.

When do you need to complete a workplace inspection?

How often a workplace inspection is required depends on many variables, from the nature/risk of your workplace to significant changes occurring. But with no set timeframe it is up to discretion, here are some things to consider when deciding on the frequency of your regular inspections.

Workplace risk – the level of risk plays a huge role in how often an inspection is required with high-risk environments, such as a construction site, requiring frequent inspections when compared to an office for example.

Significant Changes – How often your workplace changes is also important when determining how often you need to carry out inspections, as significant change will deem your old inspection outdated and will need to be reviewed as soon as possible. Significant change can be anything from a large change in staff (both numbers and experience) to a change of building layout or premises completely or even a change in equipment/machinery.

Specialists’ opinion – Formal inspections require a health and safety specialist present, so you can contact your trusted specialist to recommend your next review/inspection window.

How to complete a workplace inspection

Completing a workplace inspection depending on the environment can contain many different steps. For simpler workspaces, the responsible person will likely be able to use a risk assessment template to complete a sufficient assessment providing they have adequate health and safety experience.

However, for higher-risk or more complex workplaces, it is advised to bring in a health and safety specialist to ensure that your workplace inspections are completed to a high standard. This can then be further improved by assessing the workplace in a group to not miss out on any risks.