The penalties for failure to manage health and safety today are many. It therefore makes good business sense to avoid those risks by the use of sound, tried and tested management principles. The ultimate goal of any management system is to improve and maintain organisational performance and effectiveness. The adoption of such a management system will therefore facilitate achievement of that goal and also enable the penalties of not doing so to be avoided or at east mitigated. The key benefits of implementation will:

• improve organisational performance
• reduce costs through more efficient health and safety management
• reduce the occurrence of occupational injury, illness and fatality
• measure performance with enforcing authorities and other organisations

Abacus Safety Services can help you develop your management system in conformance with:

• HS(G)65 - Health and Safety Executive Successful Health and Safety Management
• OHSAS 18OO1 - Occupational Health and Safety Management Systems
• OSHA/ANSI principles

Conversely, we can help you develop a management system tailored to your own organisation.

A health and safety management system consists of the arrangements and processes used by an organisation to manage health and safety. Its objective is to provide the necessary framework around which good performance can be established and maintained and which will support the development of a safety culture.

The nature of the system will depend on a variety of factors including the size of the organisation and the hazards that need to be controlled. However, all organisations should have a clearly defined system for managing health and safety comprising of the following elements:

• A clear statement of health and safety policy. This should specify the top-level goals of the organisation and set the Corporate requirements for health and safety in a way which is clear and unambiguous. It should also commit to provide the necessary resources to ensure that the goals can be achieved.
• A structure and organisation by which the policy is to be achieved. This will be concerned with establishing management control, securing co-operation, ensuring effective communication and specifying levels of competence.
• A planned and systematic approach to implementing policy. The approach should be an integral part of the organisations general management systems and will have the objectives of assessing risks, assigning priorities for the reduction of risk and establishing standards to enable this to be achieved.
• Measurements of performance against the standards that have been set. This will provide a measure of achievement and reveal when and where action is required to achieve further improvements.
• The arrangements for audit and review of all the elements of the system. This process of self regulation will ensure that lessons are systematically learnt and will enable performance to be compared with internal and external standards in order to promote continuous improvement.