Managing plastics safely

Health and safety doesn't have to be complicated. The links below will help guide you around the main health and safety topics and direct you to tools that will help you comply with the law.

Health and safety basics for your business : The basics for your business provides basic guidance for health and safety that is applicable to all industries, including issues such as risk assessment, health and safety policy statements and involving the workforce.

Health and safety policy statement

All employers should have plans in place to manage health and safety. If you employ five or more people, these plans should be put down in writing in the form of a health and safety policy statement. There is a template and example policy statement on the Health and safety basics for your business pages.

Risk assessment

In your workplace, it is likely that your staff are doing tasks that expose them to risk eg using equipment, machinery or working at height. As an employer, you should look at work tasks / activities and consider:

• who might be harmed
• how they might be harmed
• what measures you currently have in place to prevent this
• whether these measures do enough to stop people being harmed

This process is called risk assessment. Where you have five or more employees, the risk assessment should be written down.
The Manage the risks to your business section gives a good overview of risk management and risk assessment.

Worker involvement

Worker involvement is an important part of managing health and safety. Your workers are often the best people to understand the risks and help find solutions. They can also tell you if some solutions are not working in the way you had planned. In addition to the information on the Health and safety basics for your business site, the worker involvement pages also contain helpful information. Through worker involvement, you can act together to reduce accidents and ill health within the workplace.