The principle objective of the Health and Safety in Employment Act or HASE is to prevent harm from occurring to employees while they are at work. It does this by imposing a wide range of responsibilities on employers and managers to develop systems.

You have legal responsibilities to your staff and any breach of these could result in legal action against you as an individual, resulting in heavy fines.

You are obliged to show that you have taken “all practicable steps” to provide and maintain a safe working environment by using the following procedures:

Hazard identification and control
Provide information, training and supervision
Accident reporting and investigation
Emergency procedures
Principles, contractors and subcontractors

The Health and Safety in Employment Amendment Act which came into force on May 5th 2003, increased the accountability of the employer. As an employer you need to be aware of the processes and duties introduced in these reforms and the practical implications.

You now have a duty to involve your employees in health and safety matters. You will need to develop a system to comply with this duty. If you employ more than 30 people, or an employee requests it, this system must be devised and implemented by 5th November 2003. There is flexibility but if you haven’t set up your own systems by this date the system set out in the act incorporating health and safety representatives will apply.

You will need to review all your company’s existing health and safety and employment policies. You must be able to share information with Health and Safety Representatives as well as employees.

Ensure you have:

A procedure for monitoring fatigue and minimising the potential stress caused by over work. Overtime and restoring must be carefully reviewed.

Develop a process for supporting employees who indicate they have a stress issue and for assisting those who have to work in stressful environments.

Provide support for trainees, volunteers and people such as those on work experience.

As an employer or company owner it is prudent to become familiar with the processes by which the health and safety representatives can issue hazard and infringement notices. Make sure you and your line managers are aware of and able to address such issues and deal with the process.

Stay abreast of all relevant codes of practice issues by OSH.

Review your suppliers of plant and make sure they have undertaken to design, make, install and maintain the equipment in accordance with the health and safety regulations.

Your accident register must now also include self-employed people contracted to work for you.

Staff that take on the role of Health and Safety Representatives are entitled to paid time off to attend approved training courses.

The most talked about aspect of the amendments would be those surrounding work in a stress free environment. You need to balance the need to be faster, more effective and provide better levels of service to your customers with providing a workplace free from the potential harm of stress.

This might mean sharing the workload more appropriately, perhaps a different staff member with different skills should be allocated the workload. It would pay to check that realistic time lines are being given for the completion of work and that pricing allows for adequate staffing of the project.

The positive aspect of these amendments is that properly organised, health and safety procedures provide staff with a better work environment and produce a more motivated and productive team.

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