In recent years, a new role has emerged within organisations: the Health and Safety Manager, and its responsibilities and functions have often led to confusion. Let’s take a look at what it is all about.
In today’s workplace, employee health and safety is a key priority for any organisation. From ensuring that physical conditions are appropriate, to the prevention of so-called occupational hazards, health and safety at work is a fundamental part of ensuring the smooth running of companies.
In this sense, companies rely on dedicated professionals, known as the “Health and Safety Manager” to ensure a safe and healthy working environment. For this reason, the role played by these experts is vital, as it is indispensable for effectively managing health and safety at work.
What role do Health and Safety Managers play in companies?
The Health and Safety Manager is a qualified professional responsible for developing, implementing, and supervising health and safety programmes and policies in the workplace. Their main objective is to prevent workplace accidents, injuries, and occupational diseases, ensuring compliance with government regulations and promoting a culture of safety within the organisation.
In this way, its functions adapt to changes, advances in technology and working environments. For example, the increasing importance of mental health and environmental issues has led to these issues being considered in their roles.
Therefore, the Health and Safety Manager must constantly analyse working conditions to determine what safety measures can be implemented to avoid accidents, prevent work-related stress and improve employees’ health, as well as the impact of their practices on the environment.
Against this background, the main functions of the Health and Safety Manager include:
- Development of policies and procedures: The Health and Safety Manager designs and establishes occupational health and safety policies and procedures, adapted to the organisation’s specific needs, and compliance with current legal regulations.
- Training and awareness-raising: Organises training programmes for employees on occupational safety, appropriate equipment, emergency management, corporate well-being, among others. They also promote awareness of the importance of occupational health and safety through educational campaigns and activities.
- Risk assessment: Conducts comprehensive occupational risk assessments to identify potential hazards in the work environment and develop strategies to minimise or eliminate these risks.
- Accident investigation: In case of occupational accidents, the Health and Safety Manager leads investigations to determine the causes or roots of the problem and thus propose corrective measures to prevent future similar incidents.
- Record keeping: After each assessment, the Health and Safety Manager makes a detailed record of incidents, dates of safety inspections, training conducted, and compliance with regulations, providing crucial documentation for internal and external audits.
Benefits of having a Health and Safety Manager
When we ask ourselves what employees value in a company, the automatic response would be to think of a competitive salary or an employee benefits programme. However, we cannot forget that having this type of professional within the organisation is also a benefit that improves the employee experience and is therefore taken into account when evaluating a job.
Having a Health and Safety Manager in the company brings with it multiple benefits, such as:
- Employee protection: This role is essential to ensure the safety and health of employees, reducing the risk of accidents at work and occupational diseases. This, in turn, reduces sick leave and improves overall company productivity. In fact, ifeel’s mental well-being trends report revealed that risk prevention should form the basis of companies’ health initiatives to take care of workers.
- Compliance with laws: Companies are required by law to comply with specific occupational health and safety regulations. Therefore, having a Health and Safety Manager in companies ensures that the organisation complies with these regulations, avoiding possible legal sanctions or fines.
- Cost reduction: Implementing effective safety measures can help reduce costs associated with workplace accidents, such as medical expenses, compensation, or lost productivity. The more the costs of an accident are known, the better the economic benefits of a preventive policy are perceived.
- Company reputation: A strong occupational health and safety culture improves the company’s image and reputation, both among employees and with customers, suppliers, and the community at large.
Caring for mental well-being in organisations
At ifeel, we know that the Health and Safety Manager plays an essential role in protecting workers and ensuring compliance with health and safety regulations in the workplace.
To support companies in this process, our team of expert workplace well-being psychologists has created a mental well-being solution for businesses that improves talent retention, reduces presenteeism, and combats employee stress.
With our mental well-being solution, your company’s HR managers can receive personalised, data-driven advice on improving mental health at work. In addition, this solution offers employees a 360° mental well-being service structured at different levels according to their needs. Try our solution now to see how it could help you.
There more! Check out our interview with ifeel’s Head of HR, Beatriz Julián Almarcegui, who discusses the latest trends in HR and well-being and the challenges faced as an HR Manager.
We hope you found this article about having a Health and Safety Manager at work interesting. If you would like more information about our mental well-being solution for companies, simply request it, and we will contact your team as soon as possible.
