Understanding workplace safety requirements (and how to implement the right systems)

As an employer, you have a range of duties towards those under your care - legally, this includes both your employees and any clients or other individuals on your premises. Understanding these requirements, and implementing the right systems to meet your duties, can be quite complicated, but it is of critical importance that you get it right. 

As with most things, it helps to break it down a little, in order to understand how you can manage each of the constituent components. From regulatory frameworks to system implementation, here’s what you need to know.

Understanding the regulatory frameworks

An important step early on in this process is understanding the exact regulatory frameworks that dictate how you need to approach workplace safety. There will be more general frameworks - such as those outlined by the HSE - and then potentially also a range of sector-specific regulations, such as those that apply to healthcare or education organisations.

It’s vital that you understand these legal frameworks fully before you start looking at any safety or security systems. You may need to speak with safety consultants or solicitors in order to fully understand your obligations, and to make sure that the way you approach them doesn’t leave you legally liable. 

Risk assessment

Risk assessments lie at the core of any approach to workplace safety. To understand the contextual and environmental risks that your employees will actually be facing, you’ll need to take a step back and clearly document potential risks, the likelihood that they will occur, and potential ways that you can then mitigate those risks. 

These risk assessments will need coming back to on a regular basis, to ensure that the risks haven’t changed (which they likely will do) and that the solutions you have in place actually remain effective in terms of mitigation. 

Choosing the right systems

Once you know the risks that are present in your workplace, you can start to choose and implement the right systems to effectively deal with those risks. Luckily, there are heaps of technologically advanced tools available nowadays to deal with all sorts of day-to-day issues, from key management systems to digital incident report logs. 

For example, you can use key storage lockers from providers like Traka to manage who has access to more dangerous areas in your premises, while also using these solutions to automatically maintain the logbooks necessary to prove legal compliance to regulators.

Finding the right systems for the tasks in question will typically require extensive research, and you’ll often find that there are multiple different solutions that are similarly capable. Identifying the option that’s most efficient, and is the easiest to integrate into your existing system, can be the hardest part to do well.

Workplace safety is an important area of concern for all business owners, and it’s something that needs to be taken care of sooner rather than later. The longer you leave it, the more vulnerable your employees will be, which will risk leaving your business vulnerable to legal threats as well.