Making Health and Safety Positive – Duct Work Cleaning Professionals Ingot Services Share Their Secrets

At Ingot Services, as well as offering guidance on duct work cleaning issues, we are often asked for our advice on health and safety in the workplace. 

When it comes to workplace health and safety , the law is clear, and laid out mainly in the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974. The extent of your duties will depend very much on your business and the aspects within it, for instance, regular duct work cleaning is a requirement by law if you have a heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) system within your workplace. But as a minimum, every employer has a duty of care to ensure that the workplace is safe and that safe working practices are adhered to. 

Negative associations with health and safety policies can hinder not only compliance with regulations, but can also endanger lives. So how can managers make sure that their employees buy into health and safety policies?

A Positive Health and Safety Culture

The culture of an organisation reflects how it operates – how, where, who, when and why things are done. The health and safety culture within an organisation does the same, describing how health and safety is managed, where it applies, who is responsible, when it applies and why policies are in place. Within the HSE document 'HSG65 – Successful Health and Safety Management' health and safety culture is defined as “the product of individual and group values, attitudes, perceptions, competencies and patterns of behaviour that determine the commitment to, and the style and proficiency of, an organisation's health and safety management”. As with the productivity and success of business, to successfully implement health and safety policy, the culture has to be a positive one, and the key to this is communication.

Assessing Your Health and Safety Culture

Reviewing the culture of health and safety within your organisation, there are key aspects that can highlight either a positive or a poor culture.  These include:

• Are health and safety policies well communicated and understood?
• Is it clear how people should behave?
• Are health and safety systems complied with?
• Is management all on board?
• Is safety put above cost and productivity?
• Are health and safety systems realistic?
• Is the workforce involved in all aspects of health and safety?
• Are opportunities for improvement sought and implemented?

Once all of these areas have been evaluated, if a poor health and safety culture is discovered, positive moves to change this should be planned and implemented. Culture per se cannot be altered directly, instead, aspects relating to it, such as management backing and communication need to be enhanced. When it comes to gaining buy in for any culture, employee engagement is key and positive associations with the vision and values of the company will encourage buy in of all policies.

Reacting Positively To Health and Safety – Duct Work Cleaning Professionals Ingot Services

At Ingot Services, with duct work cleaning being a key part of adhering to health and safety law, health and safety is a key aspect of our business, and making sure that we have buy in from the whole team is essential. Putting health and safety at the fore, we safeguard our employees by ensuring that they are well trained to all of the latest standards, and our policies are communicated effectively. With buy in from the top down, a positive attitude to health and safety and the procedures and safeguards we have in place is clear.

Added to this, we ensure our duct work cleaning and other services comply with health and safety legislation – we are HVAC registered, as well as being a member of the Contractors Health and Safety Assessment Scheme and a Safe Contractor Registered company.

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Motivating Your Employees To Pay Heed To Health and Safety – Advice and Guidance from Duct Work Cleaning Company Ingot Services

Duct work cleaning company Ingot Services take health and safety very seriously, both in our own business and when visiting customers. The fact that heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems attract such stringent regulations when it comes to duct work cleaning highlights the importance of health and safety in this area, and ensuring your employees pay attention to the health and safety policies your business puts in place is vital. Often asked during the course of our duct work cleaning services how to get employees engaged in health and safety, here we have put together some advice on this important business issue.

Responsibilities for Health and Safety at Work

By law, health and safety is the responsibility of everyone at work, and the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 sets out many of the responsibilities that employers and employees must take charge of.

All employers, whatever the size of their business, have a duty of care to their employees and to the public to make sure that the workplaces that they provide are safe and that safe working practices are followed:

• Make the workplace safe
• Prevent risks to health
• Ensure that plant and machinery is safe to use
• Ensure safe working practices are set up and followed
• Make sure that all materials are handled, stored and used safely
• Provide adequate first aid facilities
• Tell you about any potential hazards from the work you do – chemicals and other substances used by the firm – and give you information, instructions, training and supervision as needed
• Set up emergency plans
• Make sure that ventilation, temperature, lighting, toilet, washing and rest facilities all meet health, safety and welfare requirements
• Check that the right work equipment is provided and is properly used and regularly maintained
• Prevent or control exposure to substances that may damage your health
• Take precautions against the risks caused by flammable or explosive hazards, electrical equipment, noise and radiation
• Avoid potentially dangerous work involving manual handling (and if it can't be avoided, take precautions to reduce the risk of injury)
• Provide health supervision as needed
• Provide protective clothing or equipment free of charge (if risks can't be removed or adequately controlled by any other means)
• Ensure that the right warning signs are provided and looked after
• Report certain accidents, injuries, diseases and dangerous occurrences to either the Health and Safety Executive for Northern Ireland or the local authority, depending on the type of business

As well as having rights to a safe and healthy working environment, employees also have the responsibility to take reasonable care with their own health and safety and also to cooperate with their employer, making sure that they have been given the right training, that they are wearing appropriate clothing and that they are not putting anyone else at risk.

Engaging Employees in Health and Safety

As an employer, when it comes to abiding by your duty of care, engaging your entire workforce in good health and safety practices can help ensure understanding and cooperation.  Every business is unique and making sure that policies work for your organisation is essential, but successful health and safety working practices will always include:

• Ensuring that management are all behind health and safety practices and that they abide by them themselves.

• Involving employees within the process – appointing health and safety representatives from within the business to champion good practice.

• Being visible in the processes and initiatives that are taking place and gaining feedback whenever appropriate.

• Offering suitable learning programmes on safe working practices generally, as well as specific training on the use of tools and equipment.

• Continually improving the processes you have put into place and openly seeking suggestions for improvements.

Health and Safety at Duct Work Cleaning Company Ingot Services

Offering professional duct work cleaning as well as commercial kitchen cleaning, from deep cleans through to equipment, at Ingot Services we are a HVAC registered company. Taking health and safety seriously, both to protect our own employees and our customers, Ingot Services is a member of the Contractors Health and Safety Assessment Scheme and is Safe Contractor Registered, and we incorporate good health and safety working practices into everything that we do. 

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