Main Duties of a Health and Safety Specialist

Sep 9, 2021 4:14:28 PM | Main Duties of a Health and Safety Specialist

Employees, as with any job, it can be made just as complicated or easy as you want. In other words, the health and safety specialist has a choice between simply ensuring compliance with the requirements of the law or dealing with the issue a little deeper and more substantively? Based on this decision the duties of health and safety specialist come out. 

The following are topics that a health and safety specialist could address. Of course, you don’t have to deal with everything alone. Some tasks can also be delegated.

Health and Safety Manager Duties:

It is necessary to understand the risks employees are exposed to in the work environment and what should be done to mitigate these risks.

Preparation of Safety Instructions and Introduction to Employees

One of the best preventive measures is to raise the awareness of employees. Part of this is thoughtful and thorough employee safety training.

To do this, there must be exciting instructional materials health and safety instructions and an engaging instructional process.

Choosing the Best Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) and Monitoring Its Actual Usage By Employees (This is Not a Topic In All Companies)

Good personal protective equipment (PPE) ensures that employees are more likely to wear it. Be up to date with the latest solutions and, if necessary, replace them with better and more convenient ones.

Sending Employees to Health Check-Ups and Dealing With Employees’ Health

The purpose of the health examination of employees is to understand whether the employee is suitable to perform the given work.

Based on this, recommendations can be made on how to change the work organization or work environment in order to better protect one’s health.

The task of a health and safety specialist is to find the solutions and situations that are suitable for a given employee.

Availability of Support Staff

I refer to support staff as employee representatives, first aiders, etc. They must usually be selected, appointed and trained.

But above all, it is the task of the health and safety specialist to involve them and to make the work environment better and safer with them.

Dealing With Incidents and Eliminating Their Causes.

As for incidents, I consider accidents at work and dangerous situations. The work environment specialist should find a system on how best to collect, investigate, and address the causes.

It would be good to find a system here that also allows employees to easily report different situations.

Monitoring the Work Environment, Work Processes, Work Equipment and Detection of Potential Hazards

A systematic and regular approach should be found here to ensure that the work environment specialist is aware of the use and hazards of each room, department, work process and tool.

Constant and regular inspections make it possible to notice when a tool is starting to wear out; movement is burdensome and the ideal work environment  becomes dangerous.

To do this, it would be wise to make a plan for yourself when, what and how to check.

The above topics are the ones that a work environment specialist should definitely deal with, but there are definitely more.

It would certainly be important to be aware of new practices and technologies in order to constantly make the work environment safer and more secure.

Jaanika Jelistratov, Founder

Written By: Jaanika Jelistratov, Founder

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