Bespoke Health & Safety services

Health & Safety Audit

Organisations are often subject to audits, e.g. finance, environment and quality audits, and the same business discipline can be applied to health and safety. Audits are much more than just a box-ticking exercise or defensive measure; they can bring about positive benefits to businesses and are widely recognised as best practice for all different types of organisations.

We have a variety of health and safety audit templates that can provide an expert assessment of your organisation’s health and safety policies, systems and procedures. Whether you want to analyse your entire health and safety management system or just a particular topic or area, our audit will tell you whether your current procedures and systems are correct and delivering the expected outcomes, including protecting the wellbeing of the workforce and complying with the relevant regulations.

Behavioural safety programme

The HSE estimates that human error and unsafe behaviours are behind 95% of accidents in the workplace. Whether due to momentary lapses of concentration, mistakes or deliberate rule breaking, organisations will be interested in tackling such behaviours before they result in harm. And there’s a different approach depending on what unsafe behaviours exist within your workplace. 

Behavioural safety programmes (BSPs) are widely recognised as the next step to risk mitigation once all conventional methods such as engineered controls and systems of work have been exhausted. Our BSP can help address unsafe behaviours and involves a working with you to introduce a process of closely observing and monitoring individual workers, commending safe behaviours and engaging in an appropriate way to turn around unsafe behaviour.

Boardroom support

Directors and senior leaders must drive the health and safety agenda and lead by example. You have a key role in ensuring that systems are in place and properly resourced to manage the significant risks facing your organisation.

The Health and Safety Executive and the Institute of Directors have something to say about this in a collaborative piece of guidance called ‘Leading health and safety at work’.

Using this guide, our consultants can work with Board members to ensure they have a proper understanding of the risks, the systems in place for managing these risks, and the causes of any failures. This work can include attendance at Board meetings, audits, senior-level training and other initiatives designed to demonstrate commitment to safety.

Claims defensibility review

Having claims brought against your organisation for workplace accidents caused by employer negligence can be a stressful and unnerving experience. It’s even more frustrating when you find yourself in a position of being unable to defend yourself.

Our Claims Defensibility Review service will look at the adequacy of all the important things that are considered when a claim is made, including your risk assessments, safe working procedures, training records and inspection records. We’ll even look at your accident investigation arrangements to ensure that, should you receive notification of a claim, you are ready and prepared to provide the vital information that will help defend it and/or maximise your position.

Contractor control

Every organisation uses contractors to support their business. Given the duty of care shared by both sides to protect others from harm, it is most important that this does not result in poor health and safety standards.

Working closely with you and applying the HSE guidance contained in INDG368 ‘Using contractors – A brief guide’, we can help to ensure legal duties are met by implementing a robust contractor control procedure that ensures the proper selection, appointment, induction, training and control of your contractors.

Crisis management workshop

Similar to our Defended Mock Trial (see below), we play out a fictitious incident in the workplace and the various interventions that follow.

Our Crisis Management workshop describes a catastrophic workplace incident and builds on what happens in the immediate aftermath. Delegates will learn how to manage the situation and prevent further danger arising before moving on to consider how to handle other ‘interested’ stakeholders, including the regulator.

The workshop is a practical and innovative way of demonstrating how organisations should respond in the event of a catastrophic incident, with delegate exercises throughout the day help reinforce the message.

Culture/climate survey

Interested in uncovering your employees’ attitudes and perceptions towards health and safety? We know that these things influence behaviour, so why not learn more about the culture in your workplace as a starting point for positive change?

Our Health & Safety Culture Survey is an online questionnaire that is administered to your employees. It is specifically designed to elicit important information to help your organisation understand what drives safe behaviour in the workplace.

The survey presents respondents with a series of carefully-designed statements and invites them to indicate how much they agree or disagree. Responses, which are entirely anonymous, are then quantified. Armed with this insight, we can:

• Provide you with an objective measure of the health and safety culture within your business;
• Position your organisation on the Safety Maturity Scale; and
• Offer recommendations as to how you can progress towards the ultimate goal of becoming a generative organisation with an inherent commitment to health and safety.

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Defended mock trial

Nobody wants to appear in court charged with a health and safety offence, but the reality is many organisations fall foul of the law every year. They soon discover just how intrusive an investigation is, as evidence pertaining to various failings that have caused the incident to occur are put into the public domain.

We have developed several defended ‘mock trial’ scenarios that allow you to experience the workings of a criminal court and how the evidence unravels. Our sessions play out a fictitious yet realistic incident that has led to breaches of health and safety being brought to court. These evocative and thought-provoking workshops are an incredibly powerful way of delivering the health and safety message and driving home your responsibilities, with the ultimate aim of helping you to prevent a similar situation.

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Dynamic risk assessments

Sometimes we encounter situations where it is not practicable to record a risk assessment, yet risk control measures must still be applied. In these scenarios, we need to call upon the skills of employees to mentally observe, assess and analyse an environment in real time, to identify and remove risk.

This process is known as Dynamic Risk Assessment (DRA). We can support organisations – and their employees who work in high-risk areas, remotely, alone or in changing environments – with DRA training, which will enable individuals to identify a hazard on the spot and make quick decisions in regard to their own safety.

Gap analysis

You might feel as though you have all the right proactive and reactive measures in place to ensure the safety of your employees. But are your systems as good as you believe them? If you have some concerns or would just like to put them to the test, a Health & Safety Gap Analysis can provide peace of mind.

Our Health & Safety Gap Analysis provides an independent and impartial expert review of the performance of your occupational health and safety management system against relevant benchmark standards. By visiting your site, speaking to your people and examining your documentation, we can help you to understand what you are doing well, as well as identify and evaluate any shortcomings.  Using a Red, Amber, Green rating status, you will see at a glance the strengths and weaknesses of your system and be provided with sensible and pragmatic recommendations for further improvement where applicable.

Support with ISO 45001 Accreditation

Ever thought about going for the gold standard in health and safety management systems? ISO 45001 is the international accredited standard for health and safety at work; it will allow you demonstrate your commitment to ensuring a safe and healthy workplace and help evidence your credentials with internal and external stakeholders.

We can help you to meet the requirements of the ISO 45001 and lead you up to the point where your system is ready to be examined by a certification body accredited by the United Kingdom Accreditation Service (UKAS). We will begin by carrying out a Gap Analysis of your existing health and safety arrangements to understand how developed your system is. From there, we can agree with you a programme of work, during which we will engage with you at various intervals and be on hand to provide remote support.

Safety advancement scheme

Imagine being able to evidence continual improvement in health and safety and that all key stakeholders are a part of that process. Our Safety Advancement Scheme will enable your organisation to do just that.

The scheme has been designed to allow leaders to pledge a to commitment to continual improvement and then monitor that using a tiered Code step-by-step audit system. Everyone gets to play an active part in the management and share in the eventual success.

All organisational departments or sites will enter the scheme at Code Red (core requirements) confirmed by an initial audit. The organisation will then agree steps to move to Code Amber within a defined period (normally six months) and finally on to Code Green, with each stage being corroborated by an audit.

Specific risk assessments

There’s an art to constructing a suitable and sufficient risk assessment and emerging with something that is compliant with the law and proportionate to the risk. 

Unfortunately, some assessors adopt a risk-averse approach, leaving you with a long list of control measures that are unnecessary. Even worse, you may underestimate risks and fail to put enough in place, leaving you exposed to accidents, claims and possible enforcement action.

Whether you want to create or simply review your risk assessments relating to particular activities, locations or articles and substances used in the workplace, we can work with you to develop them and maintain a record of significant findings. That way, you can be confident that risk is being appropriately managed and will be in a position to demonstrate your compliance and defend your position should an incident occur.

Health & Safety Training

Training staff in health and safety is a statutory obligation and fundamental to protecting your workers. It’s also one of the first areas explored by the regulator following an incident.

We offer a wide range of training courses developed in house, and we are also accredited to deliver courses approved by the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health (IOSH).

For more details on the courses we deliver, click the button below – if you have a particular course in mind that you don’t see listed, contact us as we regularly engage with our clients to customise training materials to meet their specific needs.

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