Your Health and Safety Checklist

When it comes to businesses, each and every one is different. Different industries will require different machinery, different buildings have different layouts, and different risks will need to be highlighted for each. To ensure that you correctly follow health and safety regulations, which will help protect your business and staff, we have created a generic, easy to follow health and safety checklist.

Following government guidelines, this checklist adheres to the suggested plan, do, check and act practice.

1. Plan
Planning health and safety procedures in highly important; measures should be agreed upon and set in place by management to protect anyone within the business's premises. If new risks or difficulties arise then these should be looked at immediately and a solution planned out. To plan to correct procedures the following steps should be taken.

• Identify any significant risks faced by the organisation
• Set targets about what is to be achieved and how
• Educate members of staff regarding any health and safety issues
• It may be useful to appoint a health and safety ‘champion’

2. Do
After any risks have been highlighted, it is then time to implement procedures to ensure the safety of employers and the public. These not only help if an incident occurs, but also helps prevent accidents from happening, to do this the following steps should be taken:

• Purchase goods, equipment and services can help prevent hazards
• Purchase goods, equipment and services can help in the event of an emergency, for example, defibrillators or fire extinguishers.
• Provide health and safety training to some or all staff members
• Educate staff member on the correct procedures to follow in the event of a health and safety risk.
• Address any health and safety breaches immediately
• Carry out regular risk assessments

3. Check
Monitoring and reporting are vital parts of a health and safety, it should be done on a regular basis to allow all procedures are being followed, staff members are educated, and equipment is in working order, to do this the following steps should be taken:

• Provide routine reports on the performance of health and safety policy
• Report on the efficiency of procedures on a regular basis
• Procedures are being followed by all members of staff
• All health and safety equipment are fully stocked and works correctly

4. Act
It isn’t enough to just to plan, do and check once, you also need to act and keep working through these steps in a cycle to provide optimum efficiency. These principles need to become embedded into the organisation to effectively manage health and safety, to do this the following steps should be taken:

• Health and safety performance should be reviewed at least once a year
• Are the organisation’s current priorities, plans and targets being met?
• Decide a plan of action to address any weaknesses

Here at Risk Assessment Products, we are specialists in supplying equipment and products that will help improve your business's health and safety procedures. This includes fire alarms, automated external defibrillators, safety training DVDs, cupboards and first aid kits, all of which you can find on our website.