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As an employer, you have a legal duty toward the health and safety of your workers. This includes, for example, ensuring that your employees are equipped to carry out their roles and are not exposed to hazardous substances. If your business exposes employees to specific hazards, you may be legally required to have health surveillance as part of your duty of care toward the health and safety of your employees. If you do not carry out your legal responsibility toward your employees’ health and safety, you could face civil or criminal action, so it is essential to understand what health surveillance is and whether you should have it in place in your business. This article will explain what you, as an employer, need to know about health surveillance protection in occupational health in England.
What is an Occupational Health Service?
Occupational health concerns the health of your employees. It protects and promotes good health through the prevention and control of issues that cause ill health to your employees. Additionally, it allows employees to manage work health and safety risks.
What is Health Surveillance?
Health surveillance is control in risk management which helps you identify work-related ill health or disease. It is a preventative measure that your employees agree to should be detailed in a health surveillance policy.
Health surveillance consists of regular, continuous health checks forming procedures that allow you to detect work-related ill health. Accordingly, identifying work-related ill health or disease aids in managing the risks and reducing the poor effects they can create. Generally, employers are unaware if work may be causing an employee’s ill health. Thus, health surveillance can reveal this.
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Should Your Business Have Health Surveillance?
If your business has a significant risk of exposing your employees to particular work hazards, you are legally required to have health surveillance in place. Additionally, this is part of your legal duty of care towards your employees. Health surveillance may be essential where your employees have a significant risk of exposure to:
- asbestos;
- noise or vibration;
- lead;
- fumes;
- ionising radiation;
- dust; and
- other hazardous substances.
If you are unsure whether or not your business needs to have health surveillance, your standard risk assessments should reveal this. Accordingly, you should carry out health surveillance where the assessment reveals that:
- poor health is identified as a result of working in your workplace;
- poor health is a result of exposure at work;
- poor health will likely result from the exposure; and
- there are techniques available to test the effects of poor health.
Overall, the workplace risk assessment will determine the frequency of the checks and identify exposure levels for your employees to the dangers. Even if health surveillance is not a legal requirement for your business, it may be good practice as an employer to have it in place.
What Are the Benefits of Health Surveillance?
Health surveillance has many benefits for the workplace. In addition to the overall role it plays in identifying where poor health is a result of your employees working with you, it can:
- reveal early signs of poor health or disease;
- aid in targeting other risk controls by reducing the above;
- help understand health risks;
- allow your employees to let you know concerns they have about work and their health; and
- reveal where workplace controls are faulty or lacking.
Key Takeaways
On the whole, businesses have a legal duty to protect the health and safety of workers. For example, this can include the requirement to have health surveillance that identifies where the work your employees carry out causes risks to their health or safety. The requirement to have health surveillance depends on the risk of your workers’ exposure to specific hazards. An occupational health service can provide this service for you. It consists of a series of regular health checks such as visual tests, hearing tests, and alcohol and drug tests. Additionally, for some businesses, this may be a legal requirement. Therefore, you may face civil or criminal action if you do not fulfil your legal duty.
If you need help understanding health surveillance in occupational health in England, our experienced employment lawyers can assist as part of our LegalVision membership. For a low monthly fee, you will have unlimited access to lawyers to answer your questions and draft and review your documents for a low monthly fee. So call us today on 0808 196 8584 or visit our membership page.
Frequently Asked Questions
Health surveillance in the workplace is a form of risk assessment to detect health risks caused by hazards in the workplace towards your employees. It consists of a series of health checks or tests and acts as a preventative measure and detection tool.
As an employer, you have a legal duty of care toward the health and safety of your employees. Part of this is the legal duty to have health surveillance where your business significantly exposes your workers to certain hazardous risks.
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