Health and Safety Guide

Health and Safety Guide

Fragmentation of the industry, reduced budgets, more freelance staff, and inexperienced workers, all contribute to the potential for accidents within the workplace. If planning, co-ordination and communications are poor, the chances of serious accidents happening can be significantly increased. There are several things that a company and its staff and freelancers must do to ensure health and safety in the workplace.

Health and Safety Policy
All companies with five or more employees are required, by law, to have a Health and Safety Policy. This policy details the company's actions on issues such as risk assessments and contracting staff, or manufacturers, and names the people responsible for its implementation.

The Health and Safety Policy should be made available for all crew to see, including full-time employees and freelance staff.

Risk Assessment
Risk assessment is just that - assessing risk and checking safety measures. Risk assessments should be carried out for the production office and for all locations and studios to be used. Risks are assessed as low, medium or high and then re-assessed when new safety measures have been put in place.

Some risks will be much lower once safety measures have been introduced. Other risks will always be high, such as the use of explosive substances. As long as all safety measures possible have been put in place, channels of communication established and everyone knows who is responsible for what, then the chances of serious accidents should be minimised.

Establish Responsibility

• Employers have a legal responsibility to control the risks to health and safety that arise from the work activity and to make provision for the welfare of employees.
• The employer has a responsibility to make sure that they are contracting with acompetent, legitimate company, or person. They need to check out their safety record, find out who else they have contracted to, and how long they have been established.
• Employees also have a legal responsibility to take care of themselves and the people around them that could potentially be affected by their work. It is up to the employee to know and adhere to the health and safety arrangements, as set out by the employer.
• Suppliers of articles and substances for use at work also have health and safety obligations. They will need to be informed exactly what the items will be used for, in order to make an informed judgment as to their safety under those circumstances. If anemployer is contracting people for special services, such as pyrotechnics, bothcontractor and employer have responsibilities.
• The contractor should do a risk and hazard assessment of the job. Make this risk assessment available to all relevant crew and keep a copy on file. If the risk assessment has highlighted any additional risks and/or problems, you must identify who is responsible for them - you or the contractor.
• Communication is often the key to improving health and safety at work. Many mistakes are made as a result of inefficient, or non-existent, channels of communication. In a company, key people are often designated to perform certain tasks in relation to health and safety, such as risk assessments. You must make sure that these individuals know their responsibilities and how to carry them out. You must also make sure that any freelance crew or ad-hoc staff are aware of the Health and Safety policy too.