Employers legally must appoint someone competent to help organisations meet their health and safety duties. A competent person is someone with the necessary skills, knowledge and experience to manage health and safety.
Whether you outsource health and safety support or manage things in-house is a decision for each business.
In some cases, staff members have the necessary skills to be able to draft a simple health and safety policy, risk assessments, checklists and inspection records, and keep businesses on the right side of the law, so why outsource? With pressures of an on-going workload, keeping up to date with health and safety can be a challenge and a number of organisations, despite best intentions, find themselves either not having enough time or the capacity to complete this work. New legislation that came in during the pandemic, such as Covid Risk Assessments, has given new meaning to managing Health & Safety.
On other occasions, whilst organisations have some skills internally, they may wish to seek external advice on specialist subjects, for example; asbestos, fire safety or manual handling, or simply when they feel they’d benefit form a fresh pair of eyes.
Finally, where an organisation doesn’t have access to a competent person, this role can be fulfilled by the use of an appropriately qualified and experienced external advisor.
Legislation is industry-specific so there is no one size fits all approach. Your health and safety ‘competent person’ has a challenging role. Failing to have robust policies and practices can impact your business immensely, from added business costs to reputational damage or even personal liability for Directors. There are some obvious benefits of outsourcing to an expert!
Some of the main challenges of managing health and safety in-house include trying to make sense of HSE legislation and regulations, keeping up to date with changes in legislation, and ensuring your policies and procedures are compliant, as if not, you risk exposing your staff to unnecessary risks. You also need to have a detailed knowledge of health and safety or you risk exposure to possible legal action when dealing with accidents at work.
There are however benefits of outsourcing health and safety. We keep health and safety simple & pragmatic. We have over 20 years’ experience and a team of qualified and experienced consultants specialising in a wide range of subjects including food safety, healthcare, event management, the construction industry, fire safety and asbestos. With experience comes a practical approach and importantly the recognition that health and safety needs to complement day to day business activities. Our wide and varied portfolio of customers range from new start up’s through to national institutions like the NHS. Our industry sector pages provide more information on how we can assist you. We will regularly update you on legislation changes and will notify you of amendments that might affect your organisation which assists you to reduce risks and hazards in the workplace. We can assist with accident reviews, audits and risk assessing as needed.
From one off pieces of work when businesses have limited capacity, to support with specialist assessments or an annual retained consultancy service to help keep you on the right side of the law, we can also offer SSIP applications support as part of our Hassle Free Lite service and provide Covid-19 Audits
Please visit our website for further information, contact us or call us on 0117 958 2070 for any Health & Safety needs.
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