With a wealth of crossovers, including sickness and absenteeism, it is vital that your HR and H&S professionals work together - after all, they're on the front line when dealing with any employee issues.

 

Having the correct Health and Safety policies in place help protect businesses against losses of time, fines and possible damages to reputation yet, as with HR, it isn't just about having the policies in place; ensuring they are enforced correctly is just as essential.

 

According to the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) over 1 million employees are injured and 200 killed each year due to accidents at work. In addition to this, 2 million employees suffer illnesses which are caused or enhanced by their job. As employers we'd hope our HR and H&S professionals strive to reduce these figures.

 

When it comes to robust H&S and HR policies, we hope the majority of SMEs would have these in place, yet how many of your employees know the procedures? Most likely, the minority.

 

Whatever the size of your business, whether you've 1 employee or 1,000, the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 and the raft of subsequent legislation sees H&S a necessary part of business. Employers now have a legal duty to provide information and specific H&S training to protect their employees in areas where they're particularly at risk e.g. fire and first aid.

 

In making employees aware, many employers view simple box-ticking exercises as sufficient training, yet hands-on activities that involve your staff can help drill home the physical dangers and play key roles in reducing injury statistics. Successful H&S training is all about making it memorable, meaning staff will be enthusiastic about achieving change rather than just absorbing a set of new rules.

 

With H&S now the second largest area of an employer's time - pipped to the post by HR - and the third highest compliance expenditure for small business, it's an area in which all businesses must invest time and money. Yet there's no need for employers to fret with a study published this month by the Forum of Private Business (FPB) indicating a positive shift for SMEs. The research found that internal H&S compliance costs from their 4,000 small business members dropped from £3.8 billion in 2011 to £3.7 billion in 2012. Despite not a significant change, the study also showed that outsourcing of H&S to a specialist service jumped 43% since 2011.

 

This increase also helped internal time spent on this area to drop 6.8%; a great result for SMEs where time is effectively money.

 

This it set to fall even further, with sweeping changes to workplace health and safety and HR regulations taking effect this October seeing more SMEs opting to outsource these areas to help ensure compliance of the ever-changing fields.

 

Employers needn't view Health and Safety as red tape, yet you need to be aware that just like HR, even the most minor of incidents creates costly consequences. For a small business, your most valuable asset are your people, therefore having robust H&S and HR policies in place which complement one another help drive the best out of your team as well as protecting them and the business.

 

As a specialist provider of HR and H&S, ClearSky HR offer comprehensive services combining these two vital areas. For more information on how ClearSky HR can save your business time and money, contact the team today on 0808 147 1921 or visit http://www.clearsky-hr.co.uk/.