3 Key Reasons To Develop Your Own Health & Safety Policy Template
Here at SpillFix we’ve chosen to focus on helping companies obtain one particular health and safety tool: your absorbent product of choice. But that doesn’t mean we’ve forgotten about all of the other things that play into a safe work environment – and we always tell our clients that if they haven’t developed their own health and safety policy that addresses all of their safety needs, then they have a lot of work to do.
When it comes to workplace safety, there’s a lot for people to keep track of – that’s exactly why one company’s safety policy isn’t necessarily a good fit for another. Different companies face different types of risks; combine this with different schedules, different internal employee structures and different procedures, and it becomes clear why one safety policy for one organization simply won’t work at another company.
These differences are exactly why different companies should always go through the important process of developing their own health and safety policy template to use and build on, rather than simply using a sister company’s. Building your own health and safety policy will allow to you to do three important things:
- Access your specific company’s risk factors. Everything from the items being stored to the layout of the building or the schedules your employees work can contribute to the risk factors your company must address. Good health and safety policies are built on a company’s risk assessment findings, since (as rospaworkplacesafety.com points out) a risk assessment allows you to see “what, in your work, could cause harm to people, so that you can weigh up whether you have taken enough precautions or should do more to prevent harm.” To learn more about the importance of and how to carry out a risk assessment, click here.
- Organize and prepare your staff, worksite and company overall for a potential health and safety issue. If something were to go wrong right now, what would you and your coworkers do? Who would be responsible for getting what done? Where’s the equipment you need to address the problem? Who needs to know about the problem first so they can help? Questions like these need to be answered before a problem arises, and developing and health and safety policy beforehand is the #1 way to make sure this happens.
- Build on your current health and safety policy in the future. Things change at work – your safety policy needs to change with them. A template gives you a flexible baseline to build on now and into the future, making it the perfect long-term health and safety tool.