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What is a Safety and Health Management System? | Online Health and Safety Training
A Safety management system is how the employer ensures effective implementation of health & safety policy in the workplace. Safety management systems can include or aspire to ISO 18001, Safe T cert (Construction) or other industry specific standards
Safety training forms an important part of the safety management system by improving the competencies of both managers and staff. Online health and safety training is fast becoming an essential part of the safety management system for many organisations. It assists with many components of the safety management system including implementation, measurement and auditing.
The 5 key aspects of a Safety and Health Management System are:
1. Policy
2. Planning
3. Implementation
4. Measurement
5. Auditing
1. Policy
Section 20 of the Safety, Health and Welfare at Work Act 2005 requires that an employer compiles a written safety statement that is specific to the workplace. The policies in the safety statement should be clear and signed off by senior management. They should provide a direction for the organisation to follow, or a vision of how the company will be, once fulfilled. They will declare the level of intent the company will take to implement these goals. Policy sets out the company’s health and safety aims and objectives. One of the company’s objectives should always be to provide a sufficient level of training and instruction for staff.
2. Planning
The planning process will help decide how policies are going to be implemented. Who will be responsible for each aspect of the safety management system. At each level certain skills and expertise will be required. An employer should, during the planning stage, allocate sufficient resources to safety personnel in order for them to be effective
To deliver the objectives, a management structure with responsibilities, scheduling and reporting protocols must put in place. These objectives and targets should be assigned to all relevant managers and employees.
3. Implementation
This stage is crucial, and depends on a well thought out plan. Measurement of implementation will also inform and help revise the plan. Personnel with the necessary skills and knowledge will ensure that implementation is as effective as possible.
Implementation is the task completion or actualisation stage of the plan. Implementation will involve all staff either in participation, task completion or organisation and management of the health and safety management plan. This step is crucial to the success of your safety and health management system. If implementation does not occur, the further step will be redundant and all previous steps will have been wasted. Training and instruction of staff will help ensure effective implementation
4. Measurement
Measurement systems should be decided upon in the planning stage. This will include responsibility of data collection and who reports to who. The types of measurement used will vary according to objective. But it is imperative that measurement takes place to gain information on how the plan is going. Measurement will include qualitative and quantitative data. For example:
- “Has there been a decrease in accidents? Yes/No”
- “What proportion of employees are aware of the new protocols? 75%”
This stage tends to generate a lot of paperwork, online training and progress measurement helps to reduce the amount of paperwork generated and also makes it easier to track progress
5. Auditing
This is the analysis and review stage of your data. How well has the plan worked so far? Where has it been most and least successful? What were the factors affecting that success/ failure? Auditing fits into your safety and health management system as the analyse and report back step. It is crucial to have a feedback loop, reporting results, findings and advice back to the policy and objective setters at top. Without this feedback, continuous improvement of health and safety issues cannot occur. Our online health and safety training system will help inform managers and staff with key responsibilities as to what they should be looking for during an audit.
Results of an audit should be thoroughly reviewed and fed back to the planning stage in order to better inform the plan and improve the safety management system for the future.
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