The Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations state that Health and Safety information provided by employers to their employees must be “Comprehensible and Relevant“.
Clear Communication
Effectively, this means that any information provided by an employer must be at an appropriate level for the persons receiving it, taking into account many variables such as age, experience, disabilities, language and anything else that may hinder their understanding.
Health and Safety information must also be fit for purpose insofar as it enables employees to keep themselves and their colleagues safe from injury and sickness whilst going about their duties at work.
This requires a good deal of careful thought as to what information needs to be made available and how it is to be communicated.
If something goes wrong and a prosecution is brought against an employer, a very important question will be how effectively the employer communicated these safety messages. If there is a careless or cavalier attitude amongst any employees in regard to Health and Safety, this is not an excuse for poor communication.
New Guide for Workers
In this respect, the Health and Safety Executive, in conjunction with the Trades Union Congress has just published a particularly succinct leaflet as a guide to employees about Health and Safety. This is not sufficient information in itself, but it provides an excellent foundation statement on which to assemble other information that is relevant to your workforce, industry sector and workplace.
The leaflet is entitled “Your Health, Your Safety” and consists of a little over a single side of A4. It is aimed at every UK employee, whether they be full-time, part-time, permanent or temporary. It even makes reference to those who are genuinely self-employed.
In a few well-crafted bullet points, it spells out an employee’s:
- Rights from an employer
- Personal responsibilities in regard to Health and Safety
- Information that must be provided by an employer
- Equipment and services that an employer must provide
- What to do about any Health and Safety concerns
Whilst being comprehensive in its coverage, it is also very brief, which means that it is more likely to be read and, once read, may encourage employees to seek out more information to help them remain safe at work.
Useful for Employers
This leaflet is not only valuable for employees. It can also act as a high-level checklist for busy employers and managers as an aide memoire that they have everything in place that is required of them by Health and Safety law. As with employees, it is not sufficient in itself, but can be a useful prompt as to what questions to ask or what to investigate in more detail.
You can view the English language version of the “Your health, your safety” leaflet on the HSE website at http://www.hse.gov.uk/pubns/hse27.pdf. Alternatively, it is available for download in a further 24 languages to ensure everyone can understand it with ease.
has gone seriously wrong with the spirit of health and safety over the last decade”. He also said, “an ‘over-the-top’ health and safety culture has become embedded in the national way of life”.