Responsibilities
It is the responsibility of the Health and Safety Manager to ensure the safety of everyone who enters the company’s premises. They are solely responsible for the implementation and ensuring that all the safety regulations are followed. For example, if a plant manufactures a hazardous material, then as a health and safety manager, they are responsible to ensure the safety of the workers by asking them to wear facemasks, goggles and protective clothing. If it is an office, then they are required to maintain safety by assuring that all desk drawers and file cabinets are closed, spills cleaned up and signs posted.
One of the major roles of the Health and Safety Manager is to schedule routine fire drills and also assure that each department designates a person to act as a monitor. They may also have to walk the floor regularly, to check for any violations and also to rectify any problems. The Health and Safety Manager is designated to handle the issues related to illness that may result due to unsafe working conditions. They are basically responsible for the implementation, application and maintenance of value, decision and risk management tools, procedures and techniques.
Qualifications
To undertake the role of a Health and Safety Manager, you have to acquire a college or university degree and gain several years of experience. Education is an ongoing process and must be upgraded, as new safety products enter the market regularly.
A Health and Safety professional’s responsibility is to ensure that all the fire extinguishers are in safe and working condition and that everyone knows how to find and use them. In many companies, the manager recruits new employees and also guides them with the instructions on conduct and about existing safety measures.
Job Prospects
You can also work as an Environmental Health and Safety manager in a manufacturing unit, where selection is based on education or internal promotion. The candidate would ideally need to have a degree in Industrial technology or a Business degree. But nowadays, as Environmental Degree programs have increased, candidates can find a job immediately after they complete their college education.
Protecting people, equipment and the environment is the primary motive of an Occupational Health and Safety Specialist. They are called Ergonomists, Occupational Health and Safety Inspectors, Industrial Hygienists and Environmental Protection Officers. They assist the company in creating safer and unpolluted processes. These Health and Safety Specialists scrutinize the data collected by the technicians and then improve them to protect the workers and the equipment.
The primary duty of the Health and Safety professional is to safeguard the workers and the company against the common workplace hazards. Such as:
- Injury caused from biological and chemical agents
- Protection from accidents caused by heavy metals
- Electricity hazards
In the United States, the Occupational and Health Safety Administration has been regulating the operational health and safety since 1971.
Archive for the ‘Health And Safety’ Category
A Career In Health And Safety Management
Sunday, October 3rd, 2010A Guide through the Health and Safety Passports Maze
Sunday, September 26th, 2010I need to see your safety passport before you can come on site. Literally hundreds of thousands of people hear that phrase or something like it everyday in the UK and yet Safety Passports can seem like a black art to some. What are they? Where do I get one and most importantly which one do I get? They are the dilemmas that most people are faced with.
Well, let me see if I can demystify the Health and Safety Passports industry a little for you.
In the UK there are three main players, each having issued over six figures worth of Safety Passports to individual contractors.
- The Client Contractor National Safety Group CCNSG (also known as SCATS)
- The Construction Skills Certification Scheme – CSCS Card
- The Safety Pass Alliance (SPA)(also known as the Epic card, the UKPIA card, the Food card and The Passport to Safety)
So do I need more than one passport?
The problem is that it is down to the Client as to which particular passport scheme they implement on their site. Some passports can be interchangeable with a client like the CCNSG and SPA, the one that is least interchangeable is the CSCS card, but it is always worth checking with the client first.
CCNSG
The CCNSG which was the original safety passport of them all tends to be used most in the Power Generation Industries, the steel, oil, gas, and chemicals industries. It is a generic scheme, which is not industry specific and is therefore open to clients outside of the engineering construction industry.
The Passport is obtained after taking two days basic generic health and safety training and passing a multi choice test.
CSCS Card
The CSCS card is primarily used in the construction industry. – There is no required training
To obtain a CSCS card workers are required to have completed a 45-minute multiple-choice test on health and safety in construction. It is a screen-based test and there are a maximum of 40 questions to answer. Workers can choose to attend a construction health and safety awareness course beforehand.
SPA Passport
SPA have a modular passport which has been developed with numerous industry sectors, including Food & Drink, Quarry, Petrol Retail, General Manufacturing, Building Maintenance, Pharma, Construction, Ports, Logistics, Landfill and others.
The passport is usually two days training. The first day is The Core Day which provides generic Health & Safety training. The second day is an industry specific day that addresses the particular safety needs of that sector. A delegates understanding is assessed by multiple choice
So what is the Passport
As evidence that the contractors have successfully completed the training, contractors are generally issued with a plasticised photographic pass. This enables the client to restrict entry to those who can prove they have undergone the training by producing their individual passport on site arrival.
One other question I get asked all the time is – So do they work ?
It has always been difficult to quantify the results of implementing a Safety Passport scheme on site, but over the past couple of years the SPA have been publishing results from clients. The full articles can be found on the SPA website but here are a few snippets from articles below
The introduction of the safety passport at Nestle UK was part of a review and tightening of all our own contractor management safety procedures. This has resulted in a reduction of contractor accident statistics by 68 per cent over the last two years.
Metronet using the SPA Underground Railway Passport as part of the Health and Safety Initiative led to a 75 per cent reduction in accident statistics in only 18 months.
Leicester City Council – The first local authority in England to introduce the SPA Building Maintenance safety passport scheme for its housing maintenance operatives has seen a 32 per cent drop in its accident rates in the last three years.
So there we have it, we train literally thousands of contractors a year and I hope that I have managed to clear up some of the common questions that we get asked by those people every day of the week
Health and Safety Consultant: What’s With Health and Safety Consultancy
Wednesday, September 1st, 2010Almost all companies are faced with risks in their jobs. This is not the risk of loosing the job. But risks associated with health and safety. Even a clerk is faced with such risks. Merely sitting down for 8 straight hours can have health consequences. It would mean back pains, strained eyes, or stiff necks. For more sensitive bodies, it could lead to anal hemorrhoids. Then there is the ergonomics and eyes issue in using computers. Not every business can see these details. They would notice this only when the employee got sick already. When this happens, there is high rate of absenteeism. And for the business, this is truly not advantageous. Â
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Before a business could ever experience the consequence of absenteeism of employees due to sickness, it is important that they recognize the causes of such illness. Surely, since employees spend considerable amount of time at work, it must be that the set-up or the business environment has a contributory factor of the employeeâ??s health. It is then important that businesses call health and safety consultant to evaluate the working environment as well as any factors that can possibly be detrimental to the employeesâ?? health. Remember that it is hard to regret. What is important is prevention of illness before illness of employees ever strikes. And preventions mean knowing what would affect the health of the employees in the working environment.
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Relevance of Health and Safety Consultancy
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Businesses owners and employers who are truly concerned on the welfare of the employees can call upon health and safety consultancy. Those who are concerned are those who see that people are important in the function of the business. If you are one of the business owners or employers who value the works of your employers, then you are most likely concerned with the health and safety of the employees. Otherwise, it would not matter to you if they leave their work because of sickness. You would not also mind if employees have frequent absences. In which case, this means that itâ??s better that you have no workers at all. What does it leave you then? Would your business continue to operate without people working for you? Do you want to invest in employment only to find out that there are no people who are willing to work for you because they are faced with health risks? If the answers to these questions are a big NO, then you truly need to be concerned about the health of your employees. If you donâ??t know how to start getting concerned, you need to talk to health and safety consultant.
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Function of the Health and Safety Consultant
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When you find health and safety consultant like Proactive Health & Safety, they would give you comprehensive health and safety consultancy. The business environment, set up, and any employee concerns will be taken into account. Then matched with the consultantâ??s expertise on how general health and safety of the working environment, they will give suggestions, rules, and policies that you can employ in your business. The aim is to provide utmost health and safety consultancy so that employers can utilize the employeesâ?? function.
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Overall, it is important that businesses go into health and safety consultancy. This is to avoid employee absenteeism due to sickness. This is also to prevent fast turnover of employees who find it risky to work in the hazardous and unsafe working environment. With health and safety consultant like Proactive Health & Safety available, businesses can create a safe and employee-concerned working environment.