Ten Tips for Managing Health and Safety in Local Government

It is a challenge to manage health and safety within Local Government.  There are many different jobs and multiple hazards associated with those jobs.  Roles range from reception and call centre staff to traffic wardens and environmental health officers, making the hazards diverse and dynamic.

Here are our ten top tips to help Local Government reduce costs and improve productivity by good health and safety management.

Tip one: Lead by example

Show a visible commitment to health and safety in the workplace.  Make sure you always comply with health and safety procedures yourself.  This will encourage employees to follow your lead.  Encourage people to communicate issues and ideas.  They are more likely to highlight areas for improvement if they know health and safety is taken seriously by their leaders. 

Tip two: Delegate

Being responsible for health and safety does not mean you have to complete the task yourself.  Set goals for team members on health and safety and monitor their completion through monthly meetings.

Tip three: Communicate

Ensure that team meetings, individual meetings and internal literature help you get the safety message across.  Consulting staff on issues in the workplace can help you manage safely.  Encouraging employee input makes it more likely you will get it right first time.

Tip four: Know what your people do

Make sure you are aware of the tasks your people do.  Ask what they think the hazards are in their jobs – they will often know best how to fix a particular issue.  Consider carefully any risks that altered working practices may bring.

Tip five: Create local procedures

Arrangements should be relevant, practical, usable, useful and local.  Lone working procedures for traffic wardens will be different to teachers, so a local approach is required.

Tip six: Assess risks

Complete a risk assessment for all tasks and decide if you are doing enough to control the risk or if you need to do more.  This doesn’t have to be complicated; you are probably doing risk assessment and providing controls without even realising it.  Remember - every time you cross the road, you are doing a risk assessment.

Tip seven: Train

Make sure people are clear what they have to do in their job.  Train in corporate and local arrangements to enable employees to understand, implement and improve health and safety.

Tip eight: Examine

Look at the workplace, tasks and equipment.  Is housekeeping good, and equipment well-maintained? Review absence and accident records to see if there are any trends and where people might need extra training or better risk controls.

Tip nine: Consult and check

Talk to staff – face to face or through staff surveys.  Check that local procedures are being implemented and working as they are expected to.

Tip ten: Review

Keep up-to-date by reviewing risk assessments, policies and procedures when an accident or incident has occurred, when something has changed, or at least annually.

For a no-obligation chat about ways we can help you, please contact us.