98% of establishments in the UK have health and safety responsibilities and procedures in place, according to HSE. That doesn’t mean that all procedures meet the needs and requirements of their employees. All employers must keep their employees safe. No employer wants to find that an employee has suffered an illness or injury from poor working practices.
Health and safety consultants can help you reduce risks and implement safe working practices.
Why health and safety consultants are important
Workplace injuries and ill health have significant and lasting implications for your organisation such as:
- Damage and disruption to day-to-day operations.
- Increased time spent investigating and taking swift action.
- Disruption to schedules and lost business.
- Fines and bad publicity.
Fortunately, the majority of these situations can be avoided with good health and safety management and enlisting the help of health and safety consultancy services. Under the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999, employers must appoint a competent person to manage health and safety. Employing full-time health and safety consultants can be very expensive so many businesses look for external consultants to help. But how exactly can a health and safety consultant help and what benefits can they bring?
Our Managing safely training course helps you understand your responsibilities under The Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 (HASAWA) and explains what is required in creating and implementing health and safety policies and procedures in your workplace.
The benefits of health and safety consultants
Professional health and safety consultants can bring an array of benefits to your organisation. We’ve picked out five of them:
Fresh outlook
When you appoint an external consultant, they will evaluate your organisation from a different perspective. Consultants often spot risky health and safety practices and hazards that others may see as normal and perfectly safe. By bringing onboard someone who can look with a fresh pair of eyes at your systems, processes, and operations can help detect even the smallest risk, which can cause significant problems.
Save resources
Health and safety consultants can save you time, allowing you to focus more effectively on running your organisation. A consultant will undertake all of the required assessments and provide you with the required policies ensuring that you are fully compliant.
Eliminate bias
Sometimes when a health and safety assessment is carried out by staff who are actively involved in the organisation, biases can occur, particularly if there have been previous disputes surrounding working practices or procedures. This can affect the way that assessments are carried out or the judgments that are made. An external consultant will be completely impartial and give an accurate and true reflection of health and safety standards, which leads to a more detailed assessment to ensure full and consistent compliance.
Create a positive health and safety culture
Your organisation may have had difficulties building a positive health and safety culture, including safe working practices and approaches to health and safety learning and development. Bringing on board health and safety consultants could change the mindset of employees. Enabling health and safety consultants to work with your employees and make them feel involved in the process could create a positive and energetic atmosphere and lead to new measures being the best they can be.
Increased consistency
Consultants maintain exceptionally high standards and they will implement these at all sites and in all areas of your organisation. The consultant will use their specialist expertise to ensure that your organisation is up to standard, bringing greater consistency across multiple areas.
How can Praxis42 help?
We offer health and safety consultancy services. Our expert professionals can help guide your organisation in matters of health and safety and act as expert advisors when conducting audits and assessments of health and safety measures. We offer consultancy services across a range of sectors, from retail to leisure companies.
Health and safety consultants can provide organisations with a dedicated competent professional who can look objectively at health and safety procedures in place and highlight risks and areas of improvement.
Our IOSH Approved training courses include our Health and Safety Awareness Course and Health and Safety Induction training so you can help protect employees in the workplace and help meet your compliance needs.
