Occupational health policy

If your workplace uses hazardous substances or processes, your employees’ health could be at risk. Have a dedicated policy in place to set out how you will manage these potential risks.

Managing occupational health

If you’re a larger business, or even an SME whose employees work with hazardous substances, you may wish to consider having a specific Occupational Health Policy in place. As well as stating how you will manage your employees’ health in the workplace, it also gives you the opportunity to set out what you expect from your employees. This is particularly useful where you want to retain the right to ask individual employees to complete health questionnaires during their employment with you. This is most likely to be where a genuine fitness to work issue arises that requires further investigation.

Benefits of a policy

The first and second sections of the policy include a general statement and set out the legal position, whilst the third section considers fitness to work. In particular, it states that you require any employee working in a safety-critical role to complete a health questionnaire. The advantage of this is that it’s up to you to define what you consider such a role to be. We’ve included examples, such as heavy machinery operators and those working at height, but you can amend this to suit your own needs. It also makes clear that you retain the right to make a referral to an independent occupational health advisor and describes what the employee’s legal rights are. The fifth section outlines any training and instruction to be given and the sixth and final section describes how any concerns should be reported and dealt with.