FEATURE
1999 require all businesses to undertake an assessment of risks to health and safety for the purposes of identifying the control measures required and, where there are more than five employees, to document these findings.
By contrast, there is no legal requirement for businesses to have in place or document an incident response procedure. However, the occurrence of an adverse event is not a conducive time for deciding how and in what form the organisation is to respond. It is far more preferable for actions and general strategy to be agreed in advance of them being required, for ease of reference when they are.
COMMUNICATE THE CONTENTS TO
ALL STAFF In parallel with the above, it is helpful for key personnel and decision-makers to be aware of the contents of the response procedure and where it is stored should they have cause to refer to it.
For a response protocol to be effective, it needs to be understood by and accessible to staff; the more practical and straight-forward the draſting, the easier the document will be to understand and implement.
ESTABLISH A CLEAR HIERARCHY AND
IDENTIFY PERSONS RESPONSIBLE As already touched upon, the occurrence of an adverse incident is not the time for organisations to decide individual responsibility; it is far more preferable to make these decisions in advance, which will enable a prompt response when required.
ACTIONS TO PREVENT A RECURRENCE
Mistakes happen, but, by the same token, individuals do not go into work with the expectation that they may be involved in an adverse incident.
What is important, however, is that whatever the nature of the incident that occurs, businesses take steps to learn from them and act to prevent or minimise the consequences of a recurrence. Again, there is no legal requirement on organisations to undertake an internal investigation or root cause analysis following an incident, but as a responsible employer most care businesses will likely want to understand what has gone wrong so that they can learn any lessons that are required and take steps to prevent a repeat situation from arising.
BE ALIVE TO NOVEL RISKS
Conversely, circumstances may arise – as was the case with Covid-19 – that are entirely outside the control of a business. Whilst such global events may be unforeseeable and arise with little notice, it is advisable for care businesses to consider the key components of their operation, without which they would be unable to operate.
In addition, the shape of workplace health and safety is evolving, and there is increasing recognition of the importance of employee mental health and wellbeing. It is likely to only be a matter of time before regulatory enforcement action is taken in connection with workplace mental health.
twitter.com/TomorrowsCare - 25 - CONCLUSION
Without precognition it is impossible to predict when, or if, another global event will occur, nor the shape and form that it may take. By contrast, those day-to-day risks faced by care businesses are likely to be clear and foreseeable.
Businesses can, however, take steps in respect of both to best position themselves should either occur. Whilst there’s no suggestion that businesses should prepare individual response plans for every single conceivable risk, as this would not be an efficient use of time and resources and any resulting document would be onerous and likely unworkable in practice, events of the last three years have demonstrated that businesses need to be prepared for all occurrences.
Businesses should take time now to address their mind to those core functions without which the business could not operate, and take steps to put in place control measures and contingency plans before they are required. Whilst there is likely to be some time and cost implications in doing so, these will be outweighed should that procedure be required later down the line.
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