Why prevention is important and what can be done

It is much better to prevent accidents than deal with their effects. Not all accidents can be prevented but by having a safety culture in the workplace that amount and the severity of the accidents can be reduced.

In everyday life, we do many things to prevent accidents from looking before we cross the road to general tidying up to avoid being hurt. At work, we also need to always be aware of our surroundings and to think about ways to keep safe.

Accident prevention is something that can be identified in risk assessments which identify where things can possibly go wrong and changing the work process to prevent them actually happening. These risk assessments use different laws, regulations and guidance to help employers decide on best practice and to be able to make educated decisions on accident prevention. Different areas of guidance include:

• Safe use of chemicals under COSHH
• Personal Protective equipment use
• Identifying fire risks
• Correct Manual Handling
• Identifying slip, trip and fall risks
• General health and safety planning

Training is also a vital part of any accident prevention if employees are not correctly trained they will not necessarily know that they are doing something at risk.

Although employers carry out risk assessments, it is important that employees also work safe and identify areas for improvement and report these to managers. This information can be very important in identifying new risks and then implementing policies to remove the risk. There may be some risks that are identified that it may be difficult to prevent or it may not be reasonably practicable to reduce but by reporting them, risks can be monitored.

Finally, it is very important to review all risk assessments and accident prevention on a regular basis as workplaces and people change and you need to ensure that everyone and every area is as safe as possible.

We will review many different areas of health and safety in other videos on this course.