Back to Work Health and Safety Checklist

The workforce is split like never before. While thousands continue to work from home, perhaps indefinitely, others are finding their workplace closed entirely. Some, however, are planning to get back to something resembling normality – at least for some of the time. With lockdown easing throughout the country, it’s likely more people will be returning to their place of work within the next few months.

The focus will overwhelmingly be on getting work spaces COVID-secure, and rightly so. But we shouldn’t neglect general health and safety concerns either. Employers that take this opportunity to review general health and safety arrangements will be ahead of the game.

Water and Electrics

If you have been working from home since lockdown began, it’s likely your water and electrical appliances could do with a check.

Anything dangerous or complex should, of course, be checked by somebody qualified to do the work. In terms of general electrical safety, make sure everything has been tested in advance of the return to work.

Water safety is an often-forgotten focus of health and safety but neglecting it can be deadly. Water systems will have been unused for months in many cases and this creates the perfect breeding ground for Legionella bacteria.

See: ELECTRICAL SAFETY, LEGIONELLA AND WATER SAFETY, ADVANCED LEGIONELLA

Fire Safety

Your workplace will likely will have a different layout to comply with coronavirus safety rules. This will have an effect on fire safety as it will change the evacuation procedures.

Make sure all staff are aware of any new fire safety arrangements. This will need to be factored in alongside social distancing rules.

See: FIRE SAFETY, FIRE SAFETY CHALLENGE

Preventing the Spread of Infection

Remember the first weeks back at school after the summer or the dreaded university “freshers’ flu”? When groups of people come together after a break, infections often follow and spread quickly.

Many of the steps you have taken to become COVID-secure will minimise the spread of other viruses too, but it always helps to be prepared and cautious. Make sure cleaning standards are high at all times.

See: PREVENTING THE SPREAD OF INFECTION

Returning to work can be an anxious time, especially under unprecedented circumstances such as the aftermath of the pandemic lockdown. Employers can take one worry off their employees’ shoulders by making sure they have taken every reasonable step to protect their health and safety when they return.

What has Health and Safety Done for Us?

It’s safe to say “health and safety” doesn’t always get a good press.

Blamed for everything from stopping fun events to banning conkers, health and safety legislation is more often portrayed as a grumpy killjoy than the reason the United Kingdom has one of the lowest workplace mortality rates in Europe.

To even the score, we’ve gathered some of the reasons we should all be on Team Health and Safety:

Work is an Adult-Only Environment

Some people had a good time in school; some people didn’t. But we can all agree our time there was infinitely preferable to being forced to go up a chimney or down a mine to feed our families – something that was a reality a few generations ago.

Health and safety reform has marched hand in hand with other kinds of workers’ rights, and with good reason.

Children were often exploited in early industrial workplaces. In factories, their smaller stature meant they were used to climb into hard-to-reach parts of the machinery to repair it – meaning they bore the brunt of the injuries. Likewise, their size made them suited for chimney sweep work, exposing them to dangerous fumes and causing disastrous health problems.

If this nightmarish scenario sounds alien to the life we live today, it’s advances in health and safety policy we have to thank.

Our Streets Don’t Stink (Usually)

Work-related health and safety isn’t just for the good of employees. Every year, even now, thousands of members of the public are injured due to work-related activities. The toll that pollution is having on our health and environment is well-publicised.

Regulations controlling hygiene, waste disposal and air pollution have a long history in the UK. Many 19th century Public Health Acts displayed a growing recognition of the idea of sanitation. The links between filthy living conditions and the health of the populace were clearer than they had been. These reforms paved the way for things like modern plumbing and waste practices – something we’re all thankful for every time we walk down a city street!

We’re Less Likely to Die of Infection

Florence Nightingale was an instrumental figure in improving hospital hygiene. During her work as a nurse, she noticed most deaths weren’t down to the illnesses or wounds patients arrived with, but due to the infections they later developed. She pushed for reform of hygiene standards and saw related deaths lower significantly.

Nowadays, anything related to healthcare, food preparation or waste disposal is governed by strong health and safety legislation. Some might call this red tape, but if it stops us getting ill from preventable diseases, we’re all for it.

Canaries Will Thank Us

It’s not just humans who have benefited from health and safety policy! Canaries were famously taken down mines to warn of carbon monoxide or other poisonous gases. As a sentinel species, canaries are particularly sensitive to such atmospheric problems. Their reactions – or sometimes deaths – would allow the miners to evacuate before feeling the effects themselves. Surprisingly, this practice didn’t die out in the UK until 1986, when the introduction of higher tech, automatic devices for detecting carbon monoxide replaced the canaries. Presumably, the canaries were chirping with glee about not being used in this way anymore.

So next time you hear the phrase “health and safety gone mad”, remember all the great things this legislation has brought us – humans and canaries alike.

NEW RELEASE: Electrical Safety eLearning Course

Most workplaces are heavily reliant on all kinds of electrical appliances. Electrical faults and wiring are the most common cause of workplace fires and even at 50 volts, electric shocks can cause serious injuries.

Our new Electrical Safety online course is an engaging way to explore this potential health and safety hazard. It is particularly beneficial for people working in traditional workplaces such as offices, who understand the importance of electrical safety and want to learn more.

In the course, you take on the role of an office worker accompanying an electrical consultant around the workplace. You focus on how to recognise electrical hazards and what you can do to minimise the risks.

See our new Electrical Safety course HERE.

Improving your Workplace Risk Assessment

When it comes to improving your workplace’s health and safety, there are few things more important than getting your risk assessments right. After all, if you don’t know where your potential safety issues are, how can you tackle them with the appropriate control measures?

Every risk assessment will be different because every workplace’s needs are different. There are a core group of health and safety topics that need to be covered by almost any organisation (e.g. fire risk assessment) and some specialist topics that vary depending on the company and its context (e.g. hazardous substances or legionella risk assessment). When it comes to the office risk assessment, one size certainly doesn’t fit all.

What is a Risk Assessment?

On the surface, “what is a risk assessment” seems like an easy question to answer: it’s a record of the possible risks and hazards in a working environment and the control measures in place to tackle them.

A quick internet search can reveal the technical basics of how to write a risk assessment. But all too often, they are seen as a box-ticking exercise, performed in isolation by one member of the management team purely to comply with legal requirements. The resulting document is sometimes then left to gather dust, with little relevance to the day-to-day work it refers to. This is a shame: effective risk assessments are a powerful tool to keep your staff safe and your accident rate down.

People responsible for writing them should begin by asking themselves: what is the purpose of a risk assessment? First and foremost, it exists to have real-world consequences – namely, the prevention of injury and accidents. If your risk assessment isn’t a living document that is regularly updated and has a clear relationship to how work is being performed on the ground, it isn’t doing its job.

Communication

The key to a good workplace or office risk assessment is the same as achieving good health and safety in general: communication with staff at all levels.

It’s fine to use a risk assessment template as a guide. There are many good quality versions available online. However, it’s vital to make sure yours is tailored to your specific circumstances.

The importance of communication flows both ways. Just as the suggested control measures are much more likely to be effective if they are the result of collaboration rather than dreamt up in isolation, workers are more likely to abide by health and safety rules if they know why they are in place. Like so much of successful health and safety culture, it must be an ongoing conversation. It must be a joint effort from everyone rather than something passed down from above with no explanation.

Risk Assessment Training

Writing a good risk assessment is a skill like any other. It can be improved with quality training and practice.

Any employee can learn how to write a risk assessment, though it is essentially a collaborative effort between everyone in the workplace. Employees should be empowered to speak up about the health and safety challenges they face in their workplace, from fire safety to stress levels, and the writing and updating of risk assessments are the perfect times for these discussions to be encouraged.

Designing the Perfect Office for Health and Safety

We spend a lot of our lives at work and where we work can have just as big an effect as our role itself. Let’s face it, most of us have been in less than perfect conditions at some point in our careers!

What is undeniable is that where we work has a strong effect on how we feel. It’s a big influence on our level of safety during the working day. Almost all workplace accidents are avoidable and design can play an important role in stopping problems in their tracks before anyone gets injured.

It’s rare for an employer to have the opportunity to design an office from scratch. But little changes can help too. Whether you’re re-fitting an existing workplace, relocating somewhere new or simply tweaking your existing arrangements, there are changes you can make to benefit all employees.

Getting the Basics Right

The workplace’s layout is one of the most important aspects of its health and safety. In lots of cases, the design features will not be consciously noticed but will nudge people towards more safe behaviour.

Try to make every area accessible to all. Don’t just take your current staff members into account. Even if few employees have mobility issues now, that doesn’t mean new hires won’t – and existing employees can develop them too. It pays to be prepared.

Take into account evacuation procedures. Whether it’s a fire, a bomb threat, flooding or another sudden event, you may need to get everyone out quickly and safely during stressful situations. Having a well thought out plan in place, backed up by sensible placing of workstations near to the exits, can make all the difference.

The lighting must always be carefully placed and strong enough to ensure maximum visibility. This is especially true around stairs and in storage areas. Many slips, trips and falls are completely avoidable but happen because people can’t see where they’re going. This extends to outside areas too. It could be a personal safety issue to have employees walking long distances through the dark on their way home.

Employers should also consider hygiene. Standards in this area can make the difference between one person having a bug and spreading it like wildfire through the whole office.

People should have space to move around during the day. Sitting at desks for entire working days isn’t healthy for many reasons and can contribute to musculoskeletal issues.

Minimising Stress

Stress is a huge issue for UK workplaces. Millions of us suffer from work-related stress every year, with many of these cases becoming long-term and resulting in illness.

Of course, the design of a person’s office isn’t the only factor at play. “Working conditions” doesn’t just mean physical conditions, and policies such as flexible working, a zero-tolerance approach to bullying and harassment, and fair pay can all make a huge difference to the mental health of workers. Even a perfectly designed office won’t change the culture if people are overworked and bullying is rife. Employers need to look at the full picture when improving working environments and avoid the temptation to look for a quick fix.

That doesn’t stop the environment itself from having a huge impact. People benefit from a wide variety of types of spaces in their offices. As well as the traditional desks, make room for areas to relax during breaks, smaller “quiet areas” for involved individual work requiring concentration and meeting rooms for teamwork. The sort of space your colleagues need will depend on the sort of work they do, so there’s no “one size fits all” solution.

Bringing some elements of nature into the workspace has benefits for employee health and wellbeing. This doesn’t have to be complicated: even a few well-placed plants near to where people work can make a difference.

Colour theory suggests even the décor can have an impact on stress levels. The rule of thumb suggests blue is good for productivity, green is calming and yellow is energising. No colour should be over-used but it can be a fun guide when deciding which spaces should be which colour.

There are so many factors at play that affect health and safety in the workplace. Looking at the layout and design of the office is just one step employers can take to ensure they’re taking their duty of care to their workers seriously.

Why are Workers Still Dying?

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) recently released its annual casualty figures, reporting 147 people died at work in 2018/19. A slight rise since the previous year, this number is nevertheless within normal variation. Workplace death rates have declined when compared to prior decades.

However, with world-leading health and safety legislation in place, why are workers in the UK still dying at work?

Louise Taggart’s brother Michael, an electrician, was killed in 2005 after cutting a live wire marked “not in use”. Later investigations found there was inadequate supervision and training at his company. Michael had not been supplied with the correct safety equipment.

It’s impossible to tell what process he followed when cutting the wire. Safety inspectors suggested that if he’d been holding his equipment by the insulated grips, he would have been safe from the electric shock. Despite this safety feature, many electricians grip them by the metal ends to get the necessary purchase on them.

Louise set up Michael’s Story, dedicated to preventing accidents like the one that killed her brother. Her speeches often focus on the impact on friends and families when somebody is killed or injured at work. Often, their loved ones pay the price for the rest of their lives. In 2018/19, 92 members of the public were killed due to work-related activities.

Louise was named the SHP’s Most Influential Person in Health and Safety in 2018 in recognition of her work.

Despite the important campaigning done by Michael’s Story, the HSE, RoSPA and other organisations, there continue to be far too many stories similar to Michael’s every year.

Cutting Corners

Although the legislation is in place, that doesn’t always guarantee it will be followed to the letter.

Often, HSE investigations find that the companies involved had updated risk assessments. If these were followed, they might have prevented the fatal accident. Risk assessments can be written and not followed, or forgotten about. Employers are responsible for communicating their risk assessments to their staff. They must also ensure the control measures laid out in them are put in place correctly. The appropriate Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) must be given to all staff.

There are multiple examples of badly designed work processes that put workers at risk of serious injuries or deaths. In May 2019, a waste management company was heavily fined after a labourer was killed by a loader reversing over him. The company had received a notice to improve from the HSE months before the incident, but there were still no effective traffic management systems in place. Nothing was preventing vehicles and pedestrians colliding in the area where the worker was killed. Unfortunately, as those who follow health and safety developments will know, this is far from an isolated incident.

Pressure on Workers and Managers

Workers, and their managers, are often working to tight deadlines. Whether it’s a building job that needs to be done by the end of the day or a shipment that needs to be delivered, time pressures can mean otherwise safe workers flout the rules.

In June 2018, an experienced cruise ship worker was crushed to death by a machine designed for washing windows. The coroner suggested that his death could have been prevented by asking his colleague to operate the machine remotely, but speculated he worked it manually to save time. It wasn’t suggested in this case that his employer had put undue pressure on him to complete the work quickly.

Often, the pressure to work unsafely can be unspoken. RoSPA’s website has a case study about Jason, a former construction worker paralysed after falling from a ladder. He knew at the time that he shouldn’t climb the ladder – the ground condition wasn’t right and it didn’t look secure. However, his boss had been up before him and they were under pressure to please their customer, so he climbed it anyway. This had devastating long-term effects on him and his family.

It takes courage to fight back against unrealistic pressure that compromises health and safety, but it’s vital for workers to speak up about anything that puts them at risk.

Not Enough Training

Both good quality formal training and decent on the job learning are important in producing a rounded, well-prepared worker. Amazingly, people are more likely to have a workplace accident during the first six months in the workplace as they are during the rest of their career. This can be due to inexperience, lack of familiarity with the workplace, or hesitancy to raise potential issues with new co-workers.

It’s not just inexperienced workers who need thorough training. It should be a prominent and ongoing project for everyone in the workplace. By making people aware of best practice, we can work to lower the annual fatality and accident figures. Hopefully, no more families will have to go through the pain of the preventable loss of a loved one at work.

The National Fire Survey 2019: The Results are In

Workplace fires break out tens of thousands of times a year, causing injuries, damage to property and even loss of life.

Through our fire safety courses, we are continuing to improve business’s understanding of this particular area of health and safety. Our commitment to this led us to analyse data from 46 regional fire and rescue services across England and Wales to see which areas were most at risk from workplace fires.

Between April 2015 and October 2018, over 5000 fires broke out in offices, warehouses and factories. Bedfordshire was discovered to be the nation’s most dangerous area, with the highest chance of a workplace fire at 0.65%. By contrast, West Sussex was the safest place in the country over this period, with only a 0.04% chance of its businesses requiring emergency fire services. Greater London was the country’s 9th safest place with a 0.14% risk, but suffered 602 office fires and 180 in warehouses and factories in this time – the most of any area, without adjustment for the much larger number of businesses in Greater London.

The top 10 most dangerous regions for fires in England and Wales were*:

  • Bedfordshire (0.65%)
  • Tyne and Wear (0.63%)
  • Staffordshire (0.60%)
  • Merseyside (0.53%)
  • Northamptonshire (0.42%)
  • Dorset & Wiltshire (0.41%)
  • Humberside (0.39%)
  • Derbyshire (0.38%)
  • Cambridgeshire (0.38%)
  • Devon and Somerset (0.36%)

The top 10 safest regions least likely for a business to catch fire were*:

  • West Sussex (0.04%)
  • Cheshire (0.06%)
  • West Midlands (0.06%)
  • Surrey (0.09%)
  • Lancashire (0.10%)
  • Hereford and Worcestershire (0.10%)
  • Gloucestershire (0.12%)
  • Norfolk (0.12%)
  • Greater London (0.14%)
  • Oxfordshire (0.14%)

Behind each of these fires is a story. Many of these will include the loss of people’s livelihoods, the destruction of property and stock, the closure of businesses and, in the worst cases, injuries and deaths. Workplace fires are a hazard none of us can afford to ignore – and as our survey shows, they can happen anywhere.

Just as with residential fires, workplace fires are almost always avoidable. Electrical devices are the most common cause, especially when they’re poorly installed or maintained. Fire safety is a vital issue that all employees need to be properly trained on to prevent these incidents in the future.

Fire Safety Training from DeltaNet International

Our Fire Safety suite of eLearning courses includes full-length and “Take 5” short courses.

Fire Safety Challenge uses the latest techniques in animation, interactivity and gamification to deliver a fun learning experience that people will retain easily.

Our fire safety e-learning teaches the causes of workplace fires, how to avoid them and what equipment to use, using our popular informational course style.

*Percentages were calculated using the number of fires in offices, warehouses and factories compared against the number of businesses in that region according to figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

For press and media enquiries relating to DeltaNet International’s National Fire Survey, please contact [email protected]

Seven new microlearning modules released

When annual refresher training time rolls around, you probably take it for granted that you’ll be hearing some of these common complaints:

  • “We’re too busy to complete mandatory training”
  • “The courses are too long and boring”
  • “We already know this information”
  • “It’s just a box ticking exercise to cover the company legally”

If any of these sound familiar, VinciWorks has the solution: Take 5 microlearning modules.

Out Take 5 modules are highly focused 5 minute bursts of learning built around behaviours that meet mandatory training requirements without taking up learners’ time, or re-treading material they’re familiar with.

Take 5s pack a lot of punch despite their small size. Each course features explanatory videos, audio narration throughout, and high levels of interaction.

Want to find out more? We have seven new Take 5 modules available now:

Money Laundering Challenge – do your employees know the lengths people will go to make laundered money look legitimate? In this challenge, learners discover how Frank the Fraudster laundered his cash, and must confiscate the laundered money by answering questions correctly.

Gifts and Hospitality Challenge – do your employees know what gifts are acceptable and what could be seen as bribery? Learners follow the story as a potential supplier offers an employee corporate seats at a football match – but can they make the right choices and keep hold of their integrity handshakes?

Setting a Secure Password – do your employees know how to set a secure password? This module shows learners how to set a strong password, keep it secure, and keep hackers at bay.

Is Your Information Secure? – your workplace contains more information security risks than your employees might realise. In this challenge, learners must collect all 8 information security shields by successfully tracking down the risks in a virtual workplace.

Don’t Get Burnt – would your employees know how to get to safety in the event of a fire? In this challenge, learners evacuate a building that’s on fire, but must make the right decisions along the way to make it out with all of their safety tokens.

Working with Dual Screens – there are numerous benefits to using more than one monitor, but failing to set them up correctly increases risk of injury. Once completed, learners will know how to set screens to the same resolution and set up differently sized screens for safe dual screen working.

Fire – Can You Handle It? – would your employees know which type of extinguisher to use if they had to fight a fire? In this challenge, learners need to choose the right extinguisher to put out all four different types of fire.

The above Take 5 modules are available now as part of Compliance Essentials and Health and Safety Essentials. Get in touch today to arrange a demo.

Six advantages of using eLearning for fire safety training

All businesses have a responsibility for fire safety including carrying out risk assessments, communicating risks to staff, putting in place appropriate safety measures, and delivering fire safety training.

The latter need in particular is frequently the cause of headaches for those designated as the ‘responsible person’ for fire safety, especially when required to deliver the training themselves, face to face.

It means that whenever a new person is hired, the responsible person has to take time out of their day to put together training materials and deliver training, as well deal with the necessary admin, which magnifies as a problem the bigger an organisation becomes.

eLearning benefits

While it’s true that face to face training has some unique benefits, eLearning is just as effective at reducing fire risk, as well as meeting your legal requirements around fire safety.

There are also several benefits for fire safety training only made possible with eLearning:

1. Training on demand

The online nature of eLearning means learners can be enrolled onto eLearning courses instantly and taking training within seconds.

This makes eLearning the most effective way to ensure new hires receive their mandatory fire safety training at the earliest opportunity, and more experienced members of staff can receive necessary refresher training whenever required.

2. Learners can train at any time, in any location

eLearning is the only training model where time and location are immaterial.

Courses are delivered online, so all learners require is a device with access to the Internet – no need to book an available face to face trainer and training room, or even for training to take place in regular work hours, or even at work.

3. Learners can train multiple times

With face to face training, work is carried out every time the training takes place, so if a learner needs refresher training, the cost is paid out again.

On the other hand, the bulk of the work in eLearning goes into the production of the course. Once that’s completed, learners can complete the course multiple times, perfect if they missed something during training or simply want to refresh their knowledge.

4. Some people engage better with eLearning

Appealing to different personality types and demographics is an increasingly discussed topic in business, as workplaces now span multiple generations and employers take factors like levels of introversion or extroversion into consideration.

The fact is that some demographics simply learn better through computers than face to face – if your staff are among them, then forcing them to train in other ways will always lead to poorer results.

5. eLearning makes record keeping far easier

If your business is ever audited, then you’ll be expected to present detailed records of your fire safety training, including the who, where, when and what of your training.

eLearning is the only training delivery model where record keeping is done automatically as a result of training being delivered. With any other form of training, it becomes someone’s job to maintain records, which leaves it open to human error and an endless amount of admin being created.

6. eLearning can be tailored to meet your organisation’s exact needs

Unlike training DVDs, eLearning courses are simple and cost-effective to tailor to the specifics of your organisation, which is a legal requirement of your fire safety training.

If there are any particular procedures which only apply to your business, or even a specific office, editing the content of an eLearning course is no more complicated than editing a Word document or PowerPoint presentation. If anything changes, eLearning can be updated rolled out to everyone within minutes.

Fire Safety eLearning

eLearning delivers a number of benefits which simply aren’t possible with other forms of training.