New computer software helps small firms raise their health and safety standards
New computer software helps small firms raise their health and safety standardsKeywords: Health and safety, Computer software, Standards
The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) in collaboration with Royal & Sun Alliance has published Essentials of Health and Safety Routemap, an easy-to-use computer software package designed to help small businesses improve their health and safety awareness.
Director-general of the HSE, Timothy Walker, said: "The Essentials Routemap will assist firms to avoid accidents and ill-health at work by helping them identify and control the risks their workers face."
"Having a health and safety management system which is relevant to the risks or hazards involved helps ensure compliance with health and safety law and, more importantly, helps reduce accidents and ill-health. Health and safety failures cost the UK up to £18 billion each year. Workers in small manufacturing firms are more than twice as likely to be killed at work than workers in larger firms in the same sector. The cost of work-related accidents and ill-health to employers is £140 to £300 for each worker employed. These figures speak for themselves and underline the value of essentials. It costs money – but can help save far more", he said.
The Essentials Routemap includes a user guide and a copy of the Essentials of Health & Safety at Work handbook, the HSE's most popular health and safety publication, selling 400,000 copes so far.
By using simple question-and-answer techniques, the easy-to-use software package produces health and safety reports, enabling employers to identify specific health and safety areas for improvement.
The software then takes the user through a process of preparing their own health and safety policy and risk assessment based on known hazards in their own particular business. The software can be completed in as little as one day, or in a number of flexible stages.
Although Essentials is primarily aimed at small- to medium-sized businesses, it is anticipated that the software will also be used to provide in-house risk teams and large multinationals with a useful health and safety training tool.
Paul Spencer, UK Chief Executive of Royal & Sun Alliance, said: "Many small firms have difficulty understanding their legal health and safety requirements and in some instances are unclear about the action they should take.
"Now, small- and medium-size businesses have a low cost method of determining their health and safety policy needs and reducing their exposure to the high costs and business interruption caused by accidents and illness in the workplace."
As part of the Revitalising Health & Safety Strategy, launched by the Deputy Prime Minister, on 7 June last year, HSE undertook to provide a range of straightforward information products to help small firms develop sector-specific health and safety plans. The Essentials Routemap is one example of the new range of user-friendly electronic products HSE is now producing.
The Revitalising Health & Safety Strategy sets new targets for reducing work-related injury and ill-health over the next ten years and stresses that businesses must make workers' health and safety a management priority or face increased penalties and court sentences for health and safety offences.
Copies of Essential Routemap, ISBN 0 7176 1807 2, price £95 +VAT and the Essentials of Health & Safety at Work, ISBN 0 7176 0716 X, price £5.95 can be ordered online at http://www.hsebooks.co.ukor are available from HSE Books, PO Box 1999, Sudbury, Suffolk, CO10 2WA, UK. Tel: +44 (0) 1787 881165; Fax: +44 (0) 1787 313995. HSE priced publications are also available from all good bookshops.
Revitalising Health and Safety Strategy Statement is available from:DETR Free Literature, PO Box 236, Wetherby, West Yorkshire LS23 7NB, UK. Tel:+44 (0) 870 1226236; Fax: +44 (0) 870 1226237.
For further information contact the HSE's InfoLine. Tel: +44 (0) 8701 545500 or write to HSE Information Centre, Broad Lane, Sheffield S3 7HQ, UK.
