Health and Safety apply to any work environment. It is the duty of those in charge of health and safety to identify and mitigate the hazards that apply in your workplace. Employers and organisation should have a real passion to ensure their workplace is safe. They should ensure key people are appointed and accountable. There should be clear emergency response procedures and auditable documentation.

This is where the Safety Management System (SMS) approach comes from. This is a comprehensive outlook of all health and safety that looks at all aspects of health and safety within the workplace. This includes people, equipment, tools, software, procedures, and materials.

A good SMS system looks at managing, addressing, safety policy, quality assurance, risk management, and promotion.

Safety Policy
This involves looking at policy formulation and its objectives. Here the policies should be clearly defined and outline roles and responsibilities, the measures and processes that should be taken to meet safety goals.

Risk Management
This looks at the controls of identified and assessed risks.

Safety Assurance
This acts as the quality assurance aspect of the procedures in place. It looks at the effectiveness and checks if they are fit for purpose. This function also identifies any new hazards.

Safety Promotion
This is the part that applies to all the candidates on this course. Training is the main aspect of ensuring all employees are aware of health and safety procedures in your workplace. It should not just be a tick box exercise. Employers or those in charge of safety should foster a culture of good health and safety. Meetings and communication with your team should be part of a good health and safety strategy.

Without an SMS in place employees and visitors to your workplace will not know what to do in case of an emergency. For example, when there is a fire or the alarm is on. People should also be exposed to harm if hazards have not been appropriately been identified and measures put in place. Other related risks will be employees going off work sick.

There is also a risk of the organisation and those in charge of health and safety being prosecuted by environmental officials for the failure of putting measures in place required by law. For example, an organisation that employees five or more people has to have a health and safety policy in place. There are is also the risk of a bad reputation and being sued.