Health and safety is equally important in the working environment and at home. Safety measures may not completely eliminate the risk, but they surely can reduce the risk of a dangerous event from happening and ultimately mitigate the effects caused by it.

Unfortunately, accidents and incidents at workplace are not very unusual these days. They may be due to equipment failure, lack of policies procedures or carelessness of the employees (human error). Indeed, research has shown that the majority of accidents are caused by human error, such as failure to use personal protective equipment, horseplay, confusion, lack of confidence, stress, fatigue, excessive workload, etc. Therefore, it is well evident from the research that severity of an accident could have been reduced, or rather the accident itself could have been avoided if an employee had undergone safety training.

Employees are much better protected from workplace hazards, if such hazards have been assessed by an experienced health and safety consultant. Health and safety training also helps employees to deal with potentially dangerous situation in a calm and controlled manner. Those employees who attend health and safety training are better equipped to deal with hazardous scenarios. Training educates them about the different types of safety hazards that they might be exposed to in their workplace. Therefore, having a complete health and safety training plan for all staff is an essential measure for accidents prevention. Safety consultants play a very important role in assisting companies to identify hazards and assess risks and also to develop health and safety training program for all staff.

The question one may ask is how to go about developing health and safety training plan? Hiring an experienced and suitably qualified safety consultant is the first step forward. Safety consultants provide a wide range of services in a variety of industries to provide efficient and cost-effective solutions for management of health and safety. They provide such services as preparation of safety statement and risk assessment, training, health and safety audits or implementation of the safety management system. Risk assessments are key to any commercial environment, as they help to reduce the risk of a dangerous event occurring, increasing staff and public safety. Any company that fails to carry out risk assessment breaches the health and safety law.

Most importantly, it has been imposed by the health and safety law that all employers and business owners should provide as far as reasonably practicable a hazard free workplace environment for their employees, contractors, visitors and members of the public. Being new to the facilities and surroundings, familiarity with the location of the emergency exits and the procedures to follow in the event of an accident are all important things to be taken into account.

Therefore, all business owners should be proactive in their approach to management of health and safety and avail of services of chartered health and safety consultants, where external advice is required.