Free materials for health and safety
Free materials are available from many sites – but are not always that easy to find. Below are a few things that we have found helpful. If you know of other useful free resources that people may like please let us know about them.
First-Aid
St John Ambulance have recently issued a revised CPR poster to accompany the changed methods being advised due to Covid. The poster and guidance are available for free from their website along with other advisory materials.
Safety signs
Learn how to read Safety Signs – and perhaps be able to design your own! Use our course to explain safety signs, which is free. Email info@safety4hed.co.uk for a free pack including PowerPoint slides, handouts and answer sheets.
Free to use software for making your own safety signs. The company Online-Sign provides a package that enables you to design your own compliant safety signs, and then print them locally on a colour printer (or get them to print them for you for a charge).
Free guidance documents
The HSE provide a huge amount of information on their website at www.hse.gov.uk. Most of it is reasonably well written and accessible. However, the site is still not particularly easy to navigate and there is no simple tool to guide you to the right information for you. We will happily help most people find the right information for free, provided that the amount of work needed is not excessive.
IOSH (the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health) provide quite a lot of reasonably accessible information and guidance on their site at www.iosh.co.uk. The free Books and resources are especially useful.
Display Screen Equipment Assessments
DSE assessments give many people problems, because they are seen as being complicated and costly. However, most people can easily do their own assessment following simple training and guidance. Only if problems are identified is a specialist likely to be required. Assessments help prevent serious long term ill health from the way that you use a computer or other display screen equipment.
The HSE provide a lot of guidance on this issue in their mini site. They also publish a full guidance book including comprehensive guidance. The book is available from the HSE shop as a priced publication or a free PDF download.
The HSE also provide a reasonably simple form to record your DSE assessments without having to invent your own systems.
Open Ergonomics provide DSE training and assessment tools to help people as a part of their range of free materials.
Manual Handling
Manual handling is a practical issue, and many people think is best dealt with using practical training. However, this is not always possible and refresher training may be best done using computer packages.
The HSE have a micro site devoted to manual handling issues. They also provide the Manual handling Assessment Charts (MAC) with a very useful free booklet. The booklet assists people to understand and undertake manual handling assessments of work tasks.
Open Ergonomics also provide guidance to help people suffering with or to prevent back pain.
Legislation enforced by the HSE
Acts of Parliament and Regulations (termed ‘statutory instruments’) are provided in the two lists on the HSE website with links to the legislation.gov.uk website where you can obtain most legislation for free.
Getting hold of the legislation is useful but it is only an aid to understanding how it is enforced and what it means in practical terms. If you need advice on implementing what is needed to comply with the law, please contact us.
Remember we can always help you too.
This is a link to our 2015 brochure. Feel free to download it or share the link.
