Health and Safety at work etc. Act
The Health & Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 requires all employers to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, the health, safety and welfare at work of all their employees.
This is achieved through having in place an effective Health & Safety Policy, specific to the organisation, which provides employees with comprehensible and relevant information on the risks they face and the preventative and protective measures that control those risks. Employers must provide whatever instruction, training and supervision that is necessary to implement the policy.
The content of the policy must be communicated to all employees and in turn they must recognise both their responsibility in the implementation of the policy and their competence to fulfil its requirements through relevant training.
Furthermore, regular updates to the Health & Safety Policy must be communicated to the employees who in turn must acknowledge that these have been read, understood and acted on.
To comply with the law employers must:-
- Write a Health & Safety Policy
- Carry out a Risk Assessment and put appropriate measures in place to control the risks
- Communicate the above information to all employees
- Provide whatever information and training is necessary
- Have confirmation from employees that all the above are in place
- Communicate the employees with updates which must be acknowledged
How DocRead can help
Once you have created your Risk assessments and company Health and Safety policy, DocRead can ensure that your documents are distributed to all employees.
Each employee will then be required to read the document and self certify that they agree with all elements of the policy. They must check the 'I agree' box and then click the 'confirm' button before the task will be recorded as completed.
The message that they must agree to is fully configurable by your organisation, so you can tailor this to meet your specific requirements.
Once an employee has acknowledged their acceptance of the policy they receive a positive reading receipt that they can may download or print for their records. The reading receipts are also securely stored in a central database.
DocRead reading reports can be used to monitor the progress of the policy acceptance, clearly showing how many policies have been assigned, completed or are overdue.