Ensuring people are safe in the workplace is everyone's responsibility. Whether you are a Council employee or a visitor to the Council, you should be able to go home safely. The most effective way to have good health and safety in the workplace is to adopt a risk management approach.
Good risk management is all about identifying the hazards within your workplace and doing something about them. The best approach is to look at ways you can either remove the hazard or make changes to the environment or activity to minimise the chances of something going wrong. Whilst providing people with training and personal protection equipment is important, they often do not effectively manage the health and safety risks people are exposed to.
Some good tips for effective health and safety risk management in the workplace are:
- Identify what is causing the problem and do something about it.
- Do something which provides protection for as many people as possible.
- Don’t rely on people to follow instructions perfectly. Workplaces and activities should be designed to be as safe as possible, even if someone makes a mistake.