How to Honour World Health and Safety Day 2017

World Health and Safety Day is a worldwide, annual event held by the International Labour Organisation (ILO). 

Since 2003, April 28th has been dedicated to raising awareness on various aspects that fall under the topic of health and safety in the workplace. 

Some of the topics previously covered are:

• Safety and health in the use of chemicals at work
• Join in building a culture for prevention on OSH
• Workplace Stress: a collective challenge

To honour World Health and Safety Day 2017, we cover this year’s chosen theme, the importance of health and safety and how you can ensure you have all the correct precautions in place at your workplace.

This Year’s Chosen Theme

For 2017, the ILO has chosen the theme: “Optimise the Collection and use of OSH Data”.

OSH is the abbreviation for “Occupational Safety and Health”. When this is interpreted into data it can include how many workplace injuries have occurred, if there are have been any work-related illnesses and even how many fatalities there have been.

This data can be utilised after being sent to governing bodies - such as the HSE - to help you put precautions in place to prevent these aspects from happening in the future.

Health and Safety in the Workplace

Regardless of your working environment, be it a small office building or a busy shopping centre, health and safety is an absolute must.

According to the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974, it is the duty of the employer to provide a safe working environment for their employees. They should also present a written health and safety policy statement which highlights how they intend to protect their employees.

Alongside this piece of legislation, the Health and Safety (First Aid) Regulations 1981 states that employers should provide appropriate equipment and enough trained staff to help ill or injured staff, should there be a first aid emergency.

This regulation only covers the first aid arrangements required for those of the employees; however, if you deal with members of the public on a daily basis, in an environment such as a shop, the business should also consider this in their first aid needs assessment.

First Aid at Work

The level of first aid required in each working environment will vary based on the workplace’s individual hazards and risks, as well as how many employees there are on site; for example, a chemical plant’s first aid needs are going to be completely different to the likes of an office workplace.

Both environments pose the possibility of different injuries, therefore different treatment would be required by the patient.

First aid training is the only way employees are going to gain the knowledge and skills required to assist someone who has fallen ill or injured at work, there are a variety of first aid courses to choose from all the way from adult to paediatric. Your traditional in-house training is still a popular choice for businesses small and large and is offered at a time and place that suits you by imperative training.

If your workplace doesn’t want to disrupt your daily duties and remove you from your desk, then maybe E-Learning could be an option to consider. Imperative’s E-Learning platform allows you to train on any computer or device that is connected to the Internet, allowing you to build upon your first aid skills whenever you have the time.

Open courses provide learners with the opportunity to gain not only First Aid skills but anything and everything health and safety related too. Open courses are the perfect solution if there is just you or a handful of employees wanting to learn First Aid.

Precautions in Place

As previously stated, health and safety at work is an absolute must which goes hand in hand with essential first aid knowledge.

Having your staff equipped with the skills and knowledge to assist in a medical emergency creates a further sense of teamwork in the workplace as each and every employee knows they could help one another if they needed to.

If your workplace takes health and safety and first aid seriously, we want to hear from you! Head on over to our Twitter @imptraining and let us know what precautions you have in place at work and what inspired you to implement these.