Introduction to Health and Safety Management Systems (HSMS)

Health and safety management system (HSMS) are a proven method of reducing risk and improving productivity. It can be defined as the systematic approach formed by the employer to minimize the risk of illness and injury. The processes involved in HSMS are identifying, assessing and controlling risks to workers irrespective of their job role in different workplaces.

What is the purpose of Health and Safety Management Systems?

HSMS was developed to help small businesses to prepare a safety management system for their business. It was mainly proposed to maintain a high safety standard in the workplace.

Key elements of an effective Health and Safety Management systems

There are a wide variety of aspects to be considered to create and maintain a safe and healthy working atmosphere that sometimes it is easy to get lost in it all. To succeed in creating a safe workplace truly, creating and implementing an effective Health and Safety Management Systems is the key.

A Health and Safety Management system comprises all the different elements in your workstation that need attention. It also makes sure that you provide a safe working environment for everyone who enters it.

Health and Safety management systems include the health and safety of an individual as an integral part of your business’s core operations. You will have methods for managing responsibilities, reporting, resourcing and planning to create a safe and healthy workplace by designing, developing and implementing an effective Health and Safety Management System.

An effective Health and safety management system have the following six key elements:

• a safety plan;
• policies, procedures, and processes;
• training and induction;
• monitoring;
• supervision; and
• reporting.

Adopting an effective health and safety management systems is easy but you have to make sure that it is actively implemented in your workplace. To implement HSMS in your workplace make sure that,

• workers comply with procedures and instructions;
• workers are appropriately trained, and
• workers are subject to ongoing supervision.

Safety plan: A strategic action plan that forms a part of the business plan is the safety plan. The current and prospective risk for the company is being analyzed in this plan. They also prepare a chart regarding how risks can be eradicated and controlled over a period.

The safety plan ensures that it reaches all the employees and allows them to clearly understand their safety obligations.

Policies, procedures, and processes: This element includes all the safety paper infrastructures within your company. The policies, procedures, and procedures will describe all safety expectations, behavior, record-keeping, incident reporting, and incident notification documentation.

Training and induction: According to the nature of your work station (whether it is of high-risk or low-risk), all those who enter your workstation should receive training on:

• the rules and regulations of your company;
• the rules of the site; and
• the rules of the location they are visiting.

Monitoring: Monitoring an organization usually depends on its needs and circumstances. Monitor your work station considering the level of risk. If the risk is high, the more frequent and detailed monitoring is mandatory.

Monitoring your workstation should necessarily include:

• to make sure that all risks have been covered by a new risk assessment that has been carried out due to a change in process, e.g. the installation of new workstations; and when an investigation takes place following an incident.

Supervision: With the help of adequate supervision, you can make sure that your workers are carrying out their safety obligations properly.

The level of supervision for your work station will usually increase if there is a low level of safety control put in place to reduce risk. To be more precise, a higher level of supervision is necessary for less effective control measures used.

Reporting: The Health and Safety Management Systems employed in your organization must be at the reporting level and not at the board level.

By implementing the Health and Safety Management Systems, you can improve your company’s long-term prospects. When you have HSMS in place, many financial institutions will be willing to loan you money. To achieve this, you can choose Riskcom which helps you greatly in critical risk management.

Riskcom is an enterprise risk Management consultant who is experts in managing risk for medium to large enterprises and organizations in every sector. We also help to turn your risk issues.