Health and safety is so drummed into us that we can sometimes take it for granted. This is very unwise, and in lots of industries the importance of health & safety is not an abstract, it is an ever pressing reality. With this in mind, it is imperative that you’re health and safety strategy is not only water-tight, but that your employees are health and safety-savvy.

The key to effective health and safety performance is knowledge. The right knowledge, manifested as a strategy, makes the risk of accident decrease exponentially. In fact, such as is the importance if a written health & safety manifesto that without one you may be flouting the legal requirement.

In certain industries, such as the manufacturing industry, a health and safety strategy needs to be many-layered. It should encompass all of the potential risks that are associates with said environments. With risk being ever-present in manufacturing processes, it is clear how a health and safety strategy becomes fundamental.

For example, when using power tools, several health and safety implications move to the fore. Taking just one of the potential hazards, noise, you will need to have a pre-planned strategy in place to deal with the potential risk of noise damage, or injury arising from loud noise:

So, in this case, a power tool would only be used with the use of ear defending products, that protect the ear from potentially deafening decibel-levels.