How is Health and Safety performance monitored and measured?
 
Health and Safety management systems normally work on a PDCA system (Plan, Do, Check, Act). Monitoring and review form part of the CHECK and ACT sections of most safety management systems, including the requirements within ISO 45001 (2018) and recommendations made within HS(G).
Active methods monitor the design, development, installation and operation of management arrangements. These tend to be preventive in nature, for example: routine inspections of premises, plant and equipment by staff. health surveillance to prevent harm to health.
Checking that you are managing risks in your organisation is a vital, sometimes overlooked step. It will give you the confidence that you are doing enough to keep on top of health and safety and maybe show you how you could do things better in the future.
Checking involves setting up an effective monitoring system, backed up with sensible performance measures.
Investigating and analysing incidents will also make a big contribution to understanding health and safety in your business. 
Monitoring
You need to be sure that your monitoring adds value and isn't just a tick-box exercise.
Good-quality monitoring will not just identify problems but will help you understand what caused them and what sort of changes are needed to address them. Poor monitoring might tell you that something is wrong but may not help you understand why, or what to do about it.
How to monitor
Use the same approach to monitor your health and safety performance as you would when you monitor other aspects of your business.
Monitoring requires time and effort. So you need to allocate appropriate resources and possibly train staff involved in it ahead of time. Businesses may monitor health and safety in different ways, depending on size and sector, but there are some basic principles that apply across the board.
Monitoring needs to be timely. As with all other business systems, you want to know what is happening in your organisation at the moment rather than at some point in the past.
The outcome of your monitoring will have most impact if it is reported back to key decision makers in your organisation. Unless there's a board-level commitment in advance, so you can act on what your monitoring tells you, then all your efforts to collect information could be wasted. 
Types of monitoring
There are many different types of monitoring but they can generally be categorised as either 'active' or 'reactive':

• Active methods monitor the design, development, installation and operation of management arrangements. These tend to be preventive in nature, for example:
  • routine inspections of premises, plant and equipment by staff
  • health surveillance to prevent harm to health
  • planned function check regimes for key pieces of plant
    
    
• Reactive methods monitor evidence of poor health and safety practice but can also identify better practices that may be transferred to other parts of a business, for example:
  • investigating accidents and incidents
  • monitoring cases of ill health and sickness absence records
    
    

Selecting the right measures
Most organisations use performance measures as part of their monitoring. Checking performance against a range of pre-determined measures is one of the most frequently used techniques of monitoring.
Selecting the right measures to use is the critical step. Using the wrong measures will cause a lot of unnecessary and unproductive effort, with little benefit to your organisation.

What are Health and Safety Procedures?
Health and safety procedures consist of implementing a safe system of work, work instructions, permits, etc. These factors all ensure a safe working environment. Therefore, they usually consist of step-by-step instructions and related information needed to help carry out tasks safely.

Do we need a health & safety advisor?
​If your business or organisation doesn't have the competence to manage health and safety in-house, for example, if it's large, complex or high risk, you can get help from a consultant or adviser. But remember, as the employer, managing health and safety will still be your legal duty.
There a number of strong benefits that comes with hiring a health and safety consultant.
Not all organisations have access to competent health and safety support in house. Even if you do, you may need extra help.  A Health & Safety advisor can give you access to the expertise and tailored support you need. As consultants typically work for a variety of different businesses from a range of different industries, they usually have a vast amount of skills, experience and knowledge that they can bring to your business. Their experience will enable them to better your business’ health and safety, in a way that’s specific to your business needs and to the industry your business sits in.
They should have the skills, knowledge and experience to be able to recognise hazards in your business and help you put sensible controls in place to protect workers and others from harm.
It's not usually essential for them to have formal qualifications and they're not required by law to have formal training, although it can help.

How is health and safety law enforced?
 
Health and safety laws applying to your business are enforced by HSE inspectors or by officers from your local authority. An inspector's role is to: investigate (when accidents have happened or a complaint is made) whether people are at risk, to find out if something has gone wrong.
An inspector's role is to:

• investigate (when accidents have happened or a complaint is made) whether people are at risk, to find out if something has gone wrong
• require you to take action to control risks properly if you are not already complying with the law
• take appropriate enforcement action in relation to any non-compliance, ranging from advice on stopping dangerous work activities to potentially taking prosecutions where people are put at serious risk
• provide advice and guidance to help you comply with the law and avoid injuries and ill health at work

 
Inspectors have the right of entry to your premises as well as the right to talk to employees and safety representatives, and exercise powers to help them fulfil their role.
HSE operates a Fee for Intervention (FFI) cost recovery scheme. If you are breaking health and safety laws, HSE may recover its costs from you by charging a fee for the time and effort it spends on helping you to put the matter right, such as investigating and taking enforcement action.
If an HSE inspector visits your premises and you want to confirm their identity, they all carry identification and you can ask to see this.
Inspectors and local authority officers prioritise the highest risks and those businesses which fail to manage health and safety properly.

Do I need safety accreditations such as CHAS, Safecontractor and Constructionline?
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Gaining an official health and safety accreditation has several benefits: larger clients are more likely to require official H&S. Gaining accreditation can thus give you access to more lucrative contracts and greater business opportunities. Accreditation shows that you take health and safety seriously.
Although contractor accreditation isn’t compulsory it does hold significant benefits for your construction business, not least in boosting your credibility and raising your profile in the industry.  
It can help you secure more contracts and provides clear proof during the pre-qualification stage that you take health and safety seriously.

When you gain accreditation the scheme provider’s logo can be used to good effect to market your business.