COMPLIANCE & RISK ASSESSMENT
A FIRM FOCUS ON HEALTH
Phil Jackson-Taft, Occupational Health Nurse at OH One, looks at employers' responsibilities regarding health surveillance and the challenges of ensuring HSE compliance in a post-pandemic world.
With the news that the HSE has announced that it has not extended the deferral period for health surveillance, employers can once again find themselves facing hefty fines if they fail to provide employees with the necessary health assessments. For businesses in hazardous industries which have not undertaken a check within the last 12 months, it is now a priority.
Health surveillance is a legal requirement if you have employees who are exposed to specific workplace hazards, such as noise, vibration, radiation, asbestos, lead solvents, fumes, dust, and other substances hazardous to health.
According to Health and Safety Executive (HSE) guidelines, employers must put in place ‘systematic, regular and appropriate procedures to detect early signs of work-related ill health among employees exposed to certain health risks, and act on the results’. For example, if employees are exposed to high levels of noise, then they need to have regular audiometry tests.
The HSE responded to the limitations of lockdown by imposing a hiatus on health surveillance to protect both OH practitioners and employees from ‘non- essential’ contact. Quite often, this kind of occupational health (OH) work requires face-to-face appointments to be done effectively. Understandably, the focus at the height of the pandemic was to safeguard everyone from COVID-19 infection, so health surveillance found itself very much on hold.
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However, as infection numbers have continued to drop and the vaccine rollout has progressed, that period of grace is now at an end, and for employers this means a full return to completing regular health assessments for your workforce where a risk has been identified.
The problem with health surveillance is that it is not everybody's idea of a thrilling subject and too often is viewed as a tick-box activity – with potentially catastrophic consequences, as manufacturing giant Saint Gobain discovered to its cost.
Just weeks ago, it was fined half a million pounds after several of its workers were diagnosed with hand-arm vibration syndrome (HAVS). Saint Gobain was found to have failed in two key areas: failure to act on health surveillance information, and having 'inadequate' health surveillance in place. The ‘failure to act’ point is crucial, as health surveillance depends on everyone understanding their responsibilities.
HEALTH SURVEILLANCE RESPONSIBILITIES Managers or health and safety representatives must be
conducting suitable and sufficient risk assessments, informing occupational health or management of the need for health surveillance, ensuring all employees are registered on the appropriate health surveillance programme, recording and maintaining health surveillance results, and ensuring prompt referral to OH if employees report ill-health symptoms relating to their working environment.
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