IOSH Delivering Safely Workbook 2023

Module 1 - Introduction to managing health and safety

Module 1 – Key learning points

✓ Why do we manage health and safety?

✓ How do we manage health and safety?

✓ What is the line manager’s role in managing health and safety?

1.1 Why do we manage health and safety?

Take a few moments to consider what would happen if there was a serious accident in your organisation. For example, one of your colleagues suffers lifechanging injuries, or there’s a fire in one of your buildings – this could be fatal!

How would it affect you and others? Think about the injured employee, their personal pain and suffering, and how the accident would affect their family.

It is possible that they could have an extended hospital stay and might never work again. Or possibly worse, what if the accident was fatal? It would be devastating enough for you, let alone their family.

With serious or fatal accidents, enforcement agencies will become involved, which may include the police and certainly the Health and Safety Executive or local inspectors. There will be an investigation which will consume considerable time and resources.

Following this, the regulator could act, which could lead to prosecutions, fines and even the imprisonment of individual managers or directors.

Think about some of the impacts to your organisation; they will include:

• Replacing the worker

• Investigation into the accident

• Slowed or stopped production

• Increased insurance premiums

• Bad publicity and reputational damage.

The consequences of poor health and safety are diverse and wide reaching, and include:

• More Accidents

• Compensation claims mean insurance premiums go up

• Possible Prosecution – HSE

• Increased employee absence and presenteeism

• Increased staff turnover rates

• Bad reputation for corporate responsibility among stakeholders

• Decreased productivity because employees are unhealthy, unhappy and demotivated

• Increased cost!

We tend to think of the reasons for managing safely in three ways:

1. Moral

2. Legal

3. Financial

Moral reasons to manage health and safety:

Society believes that it is wrong for workers to be injured or made ill through doing their job.

There are clear moral arguments for health and safety. To be safe and healthy is the most fundamental right we all share. Unfortunately, many workers and members of the public are seriously injured or killed every year due to the activities of employers across a wide range of sectors.

Legal reasons to manage health and safety

Managing health and safety at work is not an optional activity. It is mandated by criminal law and any employer who fails to comply is exposed to very significant legal risks - both at an organisational and individual level.

Health and safety laws require those responsible within organisations to take all reasonable steps to ensure the health and safety of workers and anyone else affected by their activities. Organisations create the risks, so it is only fair that they should manage them.

Directors and employees can and do go to prison for health and safety breaches, and significant fines are handed out. Clearly, there are significant legal reasons for making sure you have good standards of health and safety management.

H&S Law

The primary piece of health and safety law is the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974. This law sets out the minimum standards required at work. Here is a brief overview of the Act.

Section 2 - General Duties of Employers to their Employees

This section places duties upon employers to ensure the health, safety and welfare of employees while at work. The matters to which the duty extends include:

• Provision and maintenance of safe plant and safe systems of work.

• Arrangements for ensuring safe means of handling, use, storage and transport of articles and substances.

• Provision of information, instruction, training and supervision.

• Provision of a safe place of work and provision and maintenance of safe access and egress to that workplace; and

• Provision and maintenance of a safe working environment and adequate welfare facilities.

(Note: The above duties are all qualified by the term "so far as is reasonably practicable".)

Section 3 - General Duties of Employers to Persons other than Employees

So far as is reasonably practicable an employer has to: Conduct their undertaking in such a way as to ensure that persons other than employees who may be affected by their business are not exposed to risks to their health and safety.

Section 7 and 8 - Duties of Employees

So far as is reasonably practicable employees must:

• Take reasonable care for the health and safety of themselves and others who may be affected by their acts and omissions; and

• Co-operate with employers and managers to enable them to comply with their duties.

• Not interfere with or misuse anything that is provided in the interests of Health and Safety.

Section 40 - Onus of Proving Limits of What is Practicable

For any offence consisting of failure to comply with a requirement to do something so far as is practicable or reasonably practicable it shall be up to the accused to prove that it was NOT practicable or reasonably practicable to do more than was in fact done.

It is important to remember that enforcement action can be taken by an enforcing authority if the Inspector is of the opinion that an offence has or may be committed.

Regulations

Secondary legislation is a Statutory Instrument or more commonly referred to as a Regulation. This enables legislation to be changed relatively quickly and make explicit what is implicit within the Act. Contravention of any of these statutes constitutes a criminal offence.

These are secondary legislation and are produced on the advice of the Health and Safety Executive, or HSE, and cover specific risks and hazard topics. For example:

• Management of Health & Safety at Work Regulations

• Workplace (Health, Safety & Welfare) Regulations

• Display Screen Equipment Regulations

• Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations

• First Aid at Work Regulations

• Manual Handling Operations Regulations

• Electricity at Work Regulations

• Working at Height Regulations

• Regulatory Reform Order (Fire)

• Control of Asbestos Regulations

• Lifting Operations & Lifting Equipment Regulations

• Gas Regulations (various)

• Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations

Approved Codes of Practice (ACoPs)

These supplement regulations and contain advice on requirements and practice implementation. ACoPs have a quasi-legal status, in that failure to comply is not technically an offence provided the people charged with the offence can show that they have implemented arrangements, which, in their situation, are equally effective.

Guidance on Regulations

These is issued by the Health and Safety Executive. It has no legal status but is ‘persuasive’ and is seen by lower courts as a guide to the ‘reasonable standard prevailing’ in industry at large.

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) power to produce Approved Codes of Practice. Although not law, they have evidential status and, therefore, may be used as evidence of failure to comply with the associated legislation.

Guidance Notes are also issued by the Health and Safety Executive are also very sound professional advice in that they represent the views of the executive. Guidance may also be issued through HSE approved industry guidance. Industry guidance is useful as it helps apply the law to the industry represented.

Guidance can also be obtained from professional organisations, journals, books that can be downloaded from websites/the internet. Information sources are further considered within the section on communication

Extent of Compliance

Duties in health and safety law may be absolute (i.e. must be done) or may be qualified. The two major qualifications of health and safety law are those imposed by the phrases ‘practicable’ and ‘reasonably practicable’.

Absolute Duties – Usually preceded by the word ‘shall’ an absolute duty must be complied with. The employer has absolute duties to prepare a safety policy and to undertake risk assessments.

Absolute duties MUST be complied with, otherwise there is a breach of law. Examples of absolute duties include:

• To report major accidents to the Health and Safety Executive (as required by the Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrence Regulations 2013.

• To write a safety policy (as required by Section 2 of The Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974).

• To carry out risk assessments (as required by Regulation 3 of The Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999).

Practicable – If a duty applies so far as is ‘practicable’ it is a less onerous duty than an absolute one. Practicable means feasible in the light of current knowledge and invention. If it can be done it must be done (e.g. following an ACOP).

Reasonably Practicable – Reasonably practicable requires the degree of risk (likelihood x severity) of a particular activity or environment to be balanced against the costs (time, trouble and physical difficulty) of taking measures to avoid the risk.

The greater the risk, the more likely it is that it will be reasonable to go to very substantial expense, trouble, and invention to reduce it.

If the consequences and the extent of a risk are small, the same substantial expense would be considered disproportionate to the risk, and it would be unreasonable to have to incur them to address a small risk. T’

Based on a risk assessment

Financial reasons to management health and safety:

Accidents and ill health at work are extremely expensive and represent a huge, often hidden, source of loss. The costs associated with accidents at work can be wide reaching. The image below shows the insured and uninsured costs of and accident at work.

Cost of Accidents

Costs can be both direct and indirect. These financial losses might be covered by insurance or might be uninsured. Either way, affected employers will end up payingthe full costs over time. Whether accidents cause short, absences or long-term illness, they can have a serious impact.

Direct costs

The direct ‘visible’ cost is just the tip of an iceberg, whereas most of the costs are hidden unless you look for them. So, let’s look at the various types of losses that employers are likely to incur when something goes wrong.

The direct costs, which are usually insured, may be:

• Loss of business or ability to produce

• Claims on employers and liability insurance

• Equipment or facility damage

Direct costs that are not normally insured can include:

• Additional fees not covered by insurance

• Pay for sick employees

• Fines issued by the courts

• Any damage to tools or the facility that was indirectly caused by the incident

• Lawyers and other legal staff

• Higher insurance premiums due to the accident

Indirect Costs

Indirect costs are generated by multiple accidents, rather than a single incident. Like direct costs, they can be both insured and uninsured - Those that may be covered by insurance can be:

• The need to find and replace staff

• Claims of liability for both products and procedures

Uninsured Indirect Costs

Indirect costs that are not normally covered by insurance can be:

• Delays in production

• A loss of reputation within the community and the public at large

• Paying for overtime in order to ‘catch up’

• Lost work time due to investigations and other incident related actions

• Lost productive time for employees involved in the accident, like first aiders

• Training new staff

• A decrease in production because employees are feeling down

• Fees for administration related to the accident

• Fees for first aid training

Damage to reputation can cost more than red faces. For example:

• negative press and public opinion

• unwanted attention from pressure groups

• loss of funding or customers

• reduced profits and revenue

It is impossible for insurance to cover all the fees related to an accidentor serious ill health. Some things are simply uninsurable.

And so, high performing employers know that good standards of health and safety management are fundamental to commercial success because the costs of getting it wrong are huge.

There is a clear link between good culture and increased productivity Employees appreciate improvements you make to their working environment. Stress arising from the way an organization run is the biggest cause of absence from work today.

Excellence in health and safety should not be seen as a burden: it offers significant opportunities.

• reduced costs

• reduced risks

• lower employee absence and turnover rates

• fewer accidents

• lessened threat of legal action

• improved standing among suppliers and partners

• better reputation for corporate responsibility

• increased productivity

1.2 How do we manage health and safety?

All organisations must have a health and safety policy and if they have five or more employees it should be a written policy. The policy should set out the minimum standard of health and safety the company will achieve. Many include a description of people’s responsibilities for health and safety.

Organisations that employ significant numbers of people often have formal health and safety management systems that define how they will ensure the safety of all their staff and anybody else who may be affected by the work they do.

The two most common safety management systems that UK businesses follow are:

1. HSG65 Successful Health and Safety Management. This is the Health and Safety Executive’s own guidance on how health and safety should be managed using the Plan, Do, Check, Act approach.

2. ISO45001 – Occupational Health and Safety Management Systems is the world's first occupational health and safety international standard.

Whatever management model your business uses, it is likely to be based upon the principles of plan, do, check and act (PDCA).

Phase

Plan

Key actions and outputs

• Top management agree organisational H&S strategy, objectives, performance measures

• Top management H&S Policy Statement & Responsibilities H&S Risk Register, Register of Legal Requirements, and List of H&S Stakeholders

• Confirm H&S related policies and procedures (Management and Operational) to manage risks and ensure compliance with FHA’s legal obligations

• Put in place emergency plans (including Fire, Legionella, infectious diseases)

Do

• Assess risks and implement the preventive and protective measures needed and put them in place.

• Implement H&S related policies and procedures across the business

• Senior management provide adequate resources (financial and human) to deliver services safely and healthy, seeking competent advice where needed

• Deliver mandatory H&S training and development plans to ensure everyone is competent to carry out their work.

• Communicate, consult, and engage with FHA employees, residents, and other stakeholders on H&S matters

Check

• Carry out proactive H&S monitoring (e.g. inspections and audits)

• Investigate the causes of accidents, incidents or near misses

• H&S performance reporting

Act

• Learn from accidents and incidents, ill-health data, errors, and relevant experience, including from other organisations.

• Revisit plans, policy documents and risk assessments to see if they need updating.

• Act on lessons learned, including from audit and inspection reports

• Regularly review H&S performance, and look forwardidentifying new risks, opportunities, and challenges

1.3 What is the line manager’s role in managing health and safety?

So, managing health and safely is vital; but what are your responsibilities?

As a manager, you are on the frontline when it comes to safety. As a representative of your employer, it is your job to make decisions about how safety is handled in your sector. It is you that controls what really goes on in your area.

As a manager you are responsible for day-to-day activities and delivering services. You are likely to be responsible for a team of workers. You will be the conduit between senior management and your team.

You will make decisions about health and safety and are in control of what really happens in the workplace. Day-to-day this means:

• Carrying out risk assessments

• Training and developing your team

• Monitoring compliance and performance

• Investigating accidents and incidents

This makes you a duty holder!

Responsibility leads to accountability; as a manager you can give those people who work under your various responsibilities, but you will still be held accountable.

Managers are accountable for managing any risks to which the employee was exposed. You would be responsible for:

• Telling your workers family, they've been injured and won't be coming home this evening

• Dealing with complaints

• Assisting enforcing authorities with investigations

• Arrange agency cover or replacement workers

• Perform an investigation into the accident

• Let customers know that their orders will be delayed

These are clearly very important management duties. At the end of the day, there is no other task that you will perform that is more important than ensuring that everyone goes home safely.

Good managers should:

• Consider health and safety when planning, allocating work and developing new services

• Talk about health and safety with your team and colleagues

• Lead by example and demonstrate positive behaviours

And so, this course is designed to help you understand your responsibilities and theareas for which you are accountable. It is vital that you know when to act, how to act and when to seek guidance

Module 2 - Assessing Risk

Module 2 – Key learning points

2.1- What is risk?

2.2- What is a risk assessment?

2.3- How are risk assessments done?

2.1 What is risk?

A definition of risk is:

Risk is the combination of the likelihood of a hazardous event occurring and the consequence of the event

When thinking about risk, we need to understand the basic terms which apply to risk.

Hazard: A hazard is anything that has the potential to cause harm or damage. This might be a sharp edge on a piece of furniture or a crushing hazard from a falling load. In Module 5, we will explore a range of common hazards and how to spot them.

Hazardous event: A hazardous event is when someone or something interacts with the hazard and harm results. So you can think of hazards as being inherent within a workplace. They can sit there not causing any damage or harm. It is only when a person or persons come along and interacts with them that you get harm or damage.

Risk: Risk is a combination of the likelihood of a hazardous event occurring combined with the consequences, or the severity, of the harm or damage. Severity and consequences can be used interchangeably.

What is meant by the term’s ‘likelihood’ and ‘consequence’?

Likelihood - is the probability or chance that something will occur.

Consequence - is a result or effect of a particular action or situation, often one that is bad or not convenient.

2.2 What is a risk assessment?

Risk assessment is:

A careful examination of anything in the workplace that might cause injury or harm. The process helps assess if there is a significant risk, and if there is, what safeguards are required.

It’s a systematic method of looking at work activities, considering what could go wrong, and deciding on suitable control measures to prevent accidents, ill health, loss, damage, or injury occurring in the workplace. It should include the controls necessary to eliminate, reduce or minimise the risks.

The idea is that it should lead to practical improvements in the workplace. It should not be a bureaucratic form filling exercise with no observable outcome. Legislation and Approved Codes of Practice do not lay down a single prescribed way of undertaking risk assessments.

Risk assessments are required in law and are the cornerstone of any health and safety management system. Taking a preventative approach to health and safety at work is a legal requirement and is central to all health and safety legislation.

Risk assessment tells you whether you are doing enough to protect your workforce and others from harm and enables you to demonstrate good business practice and improve business performance. Therefore, as a manager, it is essential you have a good understanding of how to undertake a risk assessment.

The benefits of carrying out a risk assessment include:

o Recognising and controlling hazards in your workplace

o Create awareness amongst your employees

o Use it as a training tool

o Set risk management standards, based on:

o Acceptable safe practices

o Legal requirements

o Reduce incidents in the workplace

o Save costs by being proactive instead of reactive

And so, it is clear to see just how important the risk assessment process is. In this programme, we will introduce a widely recognised five step approach to risk assessment.

2.3 How are risks assessments done?

UK law states that a risk assessment must be 'suitable and sufficient' and demonstrate that:

• a proper check was made

• you asked who might be affected

• you dealt with all the obvious significant risks, considering the number of people who could be involved

• the precautions are reasonable, and the remaining risk is low

• you involved your workers or their representatives in the process

Therefore, it is important that you take a systematic approach when carrying out risk assessments, such as the HSE’s 5 steps to risk assessment.

1. Identify the hazards

2. Estimate the risk (who might be harmed and how)

3. Evaluate the risk (likelihood and consequence of harm)

4. Record your findings (including control measures to reduce risk to as low a reasonably practicable)

5. Review your findings

Let’s look at each of the 5 steps below in more detail

Step 1: Identify the Hazards

Identifying and locating any potential hazards is the first step when carrying out a risk assessment. Several different types of hazards should be considered.

Physical risks include tripping or falling in the workplace, sustaining injuries when lifting heavy materials or working with dangerous machinery.

There are also biological and chemical hazards to consider, such as asbestos, chemical cleaning products and infectious diseases.

Risk assessments shouldn’t overlook psychosocial hazards that can affect individuals’ mental health and wellbeing, for example, stress, victimisation, and excess workload.

Every workplace is different, so the types of hazards you identify will depend on your industry and the specific site.

You may be able to spot some physical hazards by simply walking around the workplace and taking note of anything that could cause harm.

But to identify the not-so-obvious risks, you could look back over your records of accidents and ill-health to see if there are any patterns.

You can also look through instruction manuals from products and equipment used in the workplace ` these can indicate any risks involved in working with these items.

Step 2: Estimate the risk

Once you’ve identified the hazards, you should consider why these hazards are harmful what type of injuries or ill-health can they cause? Hazards may pose a single threat, or they may be harmful in more than one way.

As well as detailing exactly how hazards can be harmful, risk assessments should identify who is at risk. This may be all those working on-site, groups of workers, visitors, or passers-by. Understanding who could be at risk will help individuals and organisations keep people safe.

Step 3: Evaluate the risks

This stage is about evaluating the likelihood and severity of risks and then put in place precautions and control measures.

While you’re not expected to eliminate risk, as often this isn’t possible, you should act proportionate to the level of risk. This means risks that pose a bigger threat should receive more extensive control measures than low-risk hazards. Using a risk assessment matrix like the one below helps organisations to evaluate risks and prioritize resources and actions accordingly.

The actions taken during this stage could include trialling less risky equipment or products, restricting access to hazardous areas, offering effective health and safety training, and issuing protective equipment to employees and contractors.

Step 4: Record Your Findings

Recording the findings of your risk assessment means you can use and review the assessment in the future. For employers with five or more staff, it’s also a legal requirement to document the findings of risk assessments and the action taken to reduce the level of risk.

A written risk assessment provides proof that hazards were evaluated, and appropriate action taken to reduce risk. This proof can protect your business from legal liability and may be useful when it comes to raising awareness amongst contractors and employees about the potential risks of a worksite.

Step 5: Review the Risk Assessment

Work environments are constantly changing new people come and go, equipment and products are swapped, and trialled, and new materials are introduced. And the more a workplace changes, the less relevant the risk assessment becomes.

So to make sure risk assessments are up to date and inclusive of all potential hazards, they need to be reviewed and potentially updated every time there are significant changes in the workplace.

Module 3 – Common Hazards

Module 3 – Key learning points

3.1- Identifying hazards

3.2- Controlling hazards

3.1 Identifying hazards

A hazard is:

Something with the potential to cause harm.

There are size broad categories of hazards:

1. Physical (e.g. fire, electricity, poor housekeeping)

2. Mechanical (e.g. equipment, tools, machinery)

3. Biological (viruses, fungi, parasites)

4. Chemical (cleaning products, paints, fumes)

5. Organisational (behaviour, organisational structure, workload, time constraints, culture)

6. Environmental (noise, poor lighting, dusts, temperatures, workplace conditions)

Hazards can sometimes fall into one or more of the hazard categories. For example – manual handling, or the lifting and moving of loads, can include physical hazards such as muscular strains. Plus, mechanical hazards like cutting or crushing of fingers during lifting.

Consider another example – computer workstations. This type of work has been linked to psychological stress – which is an organisational hazard. It also can cause eye fatigue and muscular problems which are mechanical hazards.

It is not possible to cover the full range of workplace hazards in a one-day course. In this module we will be covering some of the most common hazards encountered in workplaces. You can find more information about a range of different hazards and how to control them in the Common Hazards Guide which accompanies this workbook.

3.2 Controlling hazards

When deciding what needs to be done to control risks, we should try to use the best possible control possible and prevent harm. When deciding on the most appropriate way to reduce risk we need to consider: -

• Relevant legislation

• The environment of the hazard

• The competence of people exposed to the hazard

• The level and frequency of exposure

The law requires us to follow the hierarchy of risk control to help us decide the most appropriate risk controls to reduce the risk to ‘as low as is reasonably practicable’ .

1. Eliminate - can you get rid of the hazard altogether? This is the best protection

2. Reduce - can you make the hazard less dangerous? Use a safer product?

3. Prevent people coming into contact with the hazard – can you isolate the hazard completely or enclose the person in a safe area?

4. Safe systems of work

5. Personal protective equipment

Module 4 Monitoring Performance

Module 4 – Key learning points

4.1 - What is performance monitoring about?

4.2 - How do you measure safety and health performance?

4.3 - What is auditing?

4.1

- What is performance measurement about?

Performance monitoring in health and safety monitoring refers to all those activities which are concerned with ensuring that acceptable standards of health and safety performance are being met.

Monitoring is also used to highlight areas of concern so that improvements can be made before an incident occurs.

Organisations need to monitor their performance to assess how effectively they are controlling risk, and how well they are developing a positive health and safety culture.

4.2 - How do you measure safety and health performance?

There are two types of measure that can be used in monitoring performance: :

1. Proactive: feedback on performance before an incident or failure occurs

2. Reactive: are triggered after an incident or failure

Proactive measures

• Progress against H&S plans

• Training course completions

• Workplace inspections completed

• FRAs and remedial actions completed

Reactive measures

• Accidents reported

• Ill health cases

• Dangerous occurrences

• Weaknesses or omissions in performance standards

• Regulatory breaches

There are numerous tools that be used to collect data and measure performance.

Proactive Reactive

• Inspections

• Audits

• Observations and shadowing

• H&S tours

• Incident reporting

• Incident investigations

• Non-conformance reporting

There is no one size fits all when it comes to setting KPIs and objectives. However, it is important that performance indicators are:

• Objective and easy to measure and collect

• Link to organizational and departmental objectives

• Provide prompt and reliable indications of the level of permeance

• Cost-effective in terms of time and effort

• Understood and owned by the organization or group

4.3 - What is auditing?

Auditing aims to find objective evidence to ascertain whether the organization’s current health and safety policy and arrangements:

• Are in line with the organizations health and safety policies and management system

• Adequately controls and mitigates risk in practice

• Are complaint with law and regulatory requirements

Internal auditing is carried out by staff and/or competent service providers to help management measure the effectiveness of their health and safety management arrangements

External auditing is carried out by external/third parties and provided and independent review of health and safety arrangements (e.g. to a relevant British or ISO Standard)