What is the role of a Health & Safety Officer in the workplace?

In the UK, every employer is bound by the Health & Safety at Work Act 1974 (HASAWA). This is the primary piece of legislation covering occupational Health & Safety in Great Britain. It imposes general Health & Safety duties for employers, employees, and others.

All organisations are required to employ a competent person to act as a Health & Safety Officer, be it the owner, an employee, or an external person. By having somebody in this role, it allows the business to ensure Health & Safety requirements are met.

What is the role of a Health & Safety Officer in the workplace?

In a nutshell, the Health & Safety Officer’s role is to prevent accidents, injuries, and work-related illnesses in the workplace. They have a large number of duties to ensure that the workplace maintains high standards of Health & Safety.

They must create and implement policies and procedures in accordance with current legislation. It is also their responsibility to ensure that the policies and procedures are followed by all employees.

If the Health & Safety Officer is working for an organisation that employs five or more people, they must also create a written Health & Safety policy and ensure that it is regularly updated to reflect any changes to the law. They must ensure that each member of staff is aware and adheres to this policy.

Another important aspect of the role of a Health & Safety Officer is running regular inspections and reflecting their finding in risk assessments, which are used to ensure that any hazards are rectified and risks are at a minimum.

They will also oversee the workplace's accident book and thoroughly investigate all accidents that have occurred. They can use this information to ensure that accidents aren’t repeated as they can recommend safety improvements to avoid a similar accident from occurring.

Health & Safety Officers must also ensure that all staff receive adequate Health & Safety Training appropriate for their job. This includes distributing mandatory training, like Fire Awareness and Manual Handling.

How iHASCO can help Health & Safety Officers

Here at iHASCO, we offer a wide range of Online Health & Safety Training courses that have been created to help organisations work towards legislative compliance. In addition to this, we also have a fantastic workplace first aid training course.

The courses take an average of 30 minutes to complete and provide a printable certificate to the user upon completion of the end-of-training test.

Each course was created with engagement in mind, and we believe that our modern animation and presenter-lead training style helps the user digest the key information in bitesize chunks.

Interested in trying our eLearning courses? Claim your no-obligation free trial today and access all our course content for 24 hours! Simply fill out the form below...