Compliance isn’t top of the list of concerns for small business owners. They’re busy getting their new venture off the ground. They’re focused on bringing in those all-important first contracts and providing customers with a great product or service. It’s all too easy for health and safety to slip down to the bottom of the to-do list.
As an organisation gets bigger though, safety issues and regulations cannot be ignored. Heavy fines await organisations who ride roughshod over safety matters. Every employer has a legal and moral duty to protect employees while they are at work, but where should they start? Businesses know they need to operate within the rules and look after staff, but they aren’t always equipped to put systems and procedures in place.
For a smaller business it can feel like a struggle. They don’t generally have the luxury of an in-house health and safety resource, but they know that they can’t afford to ignore compliance issues. Thankfully there is a solution; standard health and safety documents can be bought in. These clever templates can then be adapted and utilised by each individual business. Having policies in place and template forms to fill out helps to take some of the grind, administration and expense out of establishing robust safety procedures.
Armed with a stack of health and safety forms any incident can be recorded and acted upon. There’s no need to call upon the services of expensive external consultants just to draft documentation. It’s all ready and available for immediate download.
Having policy documents and forms is a strong start. It allows small businesses to build up their health and safety systems without distracting owners and managers from the most pressing tasks at hand. Compliance doesn’t have to be a costly and time consuming distraction; get started with standard health and safety forms.