Health And Safety Manual
For The Workplace

Find Out How To Download A Health and Safety Manual Here

Legislation places many responsibilities on employers with regard to the welfare and safety of their staff. You have a duty of care towards your employees and must consider the possible ways is which they may be harmed in the course of their work, and take steps to minimise these risks. You also need to consult staff on health and safety matters, provide proper training and communicate effectively about the possible risks and how to avoid them.

You are legally required to have a health and safety policy, which is a written statement about responsibilities and arrangements with regard to health and safety. The best basis for ensuring that you comply with the relevant legislation is to have in place a full health and safety manual for your workplace, which staff can then refer to. Communicating the contents of this and getting staff to formally acknowledge that they have read and understood it is an excellent starting point for covering your legal health and safety responsibilities.

Ultimately you will need to create a health and safety manual that is specific to your workplace, though you can obtain excellent templates that you can adapt easily to your own needs, if you wish to save time. If you want to create your own health and safety manual, the following are some of the more common areas that you will need to cover:

A Health and Safety Policy

Under the Health and Safety At Work Act 1974, all employers are required to produce a policy statement which outlines their commitment to and arrangements for the health and safety of employees. It should state what your objectives are and outline the responsibilities and arrangements in place to meet those objectives.

First Aid Procedures

In this section you should state where first aid boxes are located in your workplace and who is responsible for maintaining the stocks of first aid supplies. Explain also your policy on training first aiders and specify who the current trained or appointed first aiders are and how they may be contacted. You need to detail all other first aid procedures such as whether you have a first aid room.

Accident and Incident Reporting

You should set out clearly what the arrangements are for reporting accidents and incidents, and define exactly what constitutes an accident or incident. It is important to record details of minor accidents and even near misses. You should have a standard form or book for reporting such incidents and your manual should explain where these are kept and who should complete them.

Risk Assessment

This is now the cornerstone of health and safety management and a key legal requirement for any business. You must assess all risks that could present a hazard to anyone on your premises and assess the precautions in place to protect people from these risks. Standard form can be a helpful guide in carrying out these risk assessments.

Staff Training and Emergency Procedures

You have a duty to train staff properly in their health and safety responsibilities, including their role in an emergency and how to evacuate the building. Your health and safety manual should explain your training policy, what training is compulsory, how and when it will be delivered, etc.

Control Of Substances Hazardous To Health

Employers are required to assess the risks associated with any hazardous substances found in the workplace. It is easy to think that this only applies to people working with industrial chemicals or other hazardous substances, but it is more far reaching than many would guess. Even things like Tipp-ex and cleaning supplies have to be considered and planned for. You should obtain data sheets for each substance used and standard forms can be used to assess the risks.

Electricity At Work

Your health and safety manual should set out your procedures for ensuring safe use and maintenance of electrical equipment in your workplace. This could include Pat testing arrangements, electrical installation testing, proper training, planned maintenance programmes, appropriate signage and warnings, etc.

Manual Handling

This should cover proper procedures for not just lifting heavy objects, but any kind of movement of equipment or goods. You should set out your policy with regard to what you expect staff to do and not do, and how they should assess whether, and how, to move things. This will inevitably involve some kind of risk assessment process and may well include special staff training.

Smoking Policy

The Health Act 2006 places new duties on employers to protect employees and visitors from the effects of second hand smoke. This should include highlighting areas or shelters where smoking is allowed.

Working At Height

There are several pieces of legislation relating to this, and it is an area that leads to many workplace injuries each year. You manual should outline your policy, which may include considering other ways of working, assessing the risk before each task, the use of appropriate equipment, the testing and maintenance of access equipment, proper training and supervision, adequate rest breaks, etc.

Personal Protective Equipment

You should outline what PPE is provided and when and how it should be used. Also consider how staff should assess its suitability/effectiveness and how to obtain replacements or report faults.

There will be other areas for consideration, depending on your workplace, which might include procedures for drivers, display screen users, use of dangerous chemicals, gasses under pressure, lone working, protection of children and young people, legionella control, use of particular equipment or machinery, etc.

Health And Safety Manual For The Workplace:
The Off The Shelf Option

If you can't spare the time to create your own health and safety manual, an excellent alternative is to download a ready made one from a useful site called Net Lawman. They are a legal company specialising in producing all sorts of legal documents, including a range of health and safety related policies and forms.

They are all legally watertight, to ensure you comply with relevant legislation, but also written in clear, plain English with a simple and logical structure. All documents are fully editable so you can add and remove what you want to suit your needs. There are a range of manuals available for many different industries, but if your particular industry is not covered specifically, you just go for the 'Comprehensive' Health and Safety Manual, which is more general.

Bear in mind that the Comprehensive manual cannot cover industry specific details, so anything that only relates to your own workplace would need adding in. A degree of support and legal advice is usually included with any document downloaded.

There are a range of other useful documents on offer at very little cost, including a Fire Safety Policy, evacuation procedures and incident report forms and a Fire Safety Assessment pack which includes all you need to a fire risk assessment, fire safety policy, check lists, etc.

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