Health & Safety Consultancy

It is important to have a system for managing your health and safety as without one, aspects will inevitably be overlooked. The best known Occupational Health and Safety Management Systems are ISO 45001 and HS(G)65, each have their benefits. Both will provide a framework to help your organisation to consistently identify hazards and control its health and safety risks, reduce the likelihood of accidents, aid legal compliance and improve your business performance.

One of the benefits of the ISO family of standards is that they aid the good synergy of business management through their integration. This enables significant savings by helping organisations to deal with their quality and environmental issues at the same time. 

ISO 45001 (previously  OHSAS 18001) is the internationally recognised assessment specification for Occupational Health and Safety Management Systems. It was developed by a selection of leading trade bodies, international standards and certification bodies to address a gap where no third-party certifiable international standard existed. If your organisation is working to, or certified to any of the ISO standards, such as ISO 9001 or ISO 14001, this is likely to be the best Occupational Health and Safety Management System for your business. Even if, at this point, you are not looking to gain certification to ISO 45001 working towards it will still deliver the benefits of integrating the management of the various aspects of your business.

HS(G)65 is the Health and Safety Executive’s guide to successful health and safety management. It was first developed in 1991 to guide directors, managers, health and safety professionals and safety representatives who wanted to improve health and safety management in their workplace. The HS(G)65 document is free to download from the HSE website for free or it can be purchased from HSE books.

This management system gives much more explanation of the requirements that enable effective health and safety management, although a good understanding of health and safety is still required to enable the implementation of a successful Occupational Health and Safety Management System. The greatest advantage of this system is that it can be cost effective to implement and maintain. One disadvantage is that this system does not integrate effectively with other management systems, which could lead to isolated management of health and safety.

If you would like help on deciding which management system is right for your business contact one of our health and safety consultants for expert advice. Whichever Occupational Health and Safety Management System your organisation adopts Lynwood can help. One way of realising significant savings in health and safety management is to train internal staff. Train managers so that they understand their responsibilities and help to avoid costly downtime and disruptions. Train employees so that they know what is expected of them and what hazards they will be exposed to. IOSH Managing Safely is recognised by many as being the best health and safety training for managers. There are a range of training courses for employees including those from IOSH and CIEH. Lynwood can also help to train your staff to audit your provisions against your chosen standard and how to identify benefits such as efficiency improvements and cost savings.

If you already have an Occupational Health and Safety Management System in place but you are not realising any benefits from it you should contact Lynwood. Our expert consultants have an established record for successful implementation and development of management systems across a diverse range of business types including ensuring that our clients realise all of the potential benefits offered by these systems advice.