Businesses must comply with local and national health and safety regulations or face the potential legal consequences of noncompliance. These consequences usually include hefty civil penalties and fines that could destroy a business. However, aside from the legal obligations of regulatory compliance, you also have moral obligations to your employees and stakeholders.

Facilities management consultancy is the best way to ensure your organization complies with health and safety regulations. A facility management consultant understands the current health and safety laws and what an organization needs to do to comply with them in the workplace. They can help you create an effective strategy to ensure your facility stays compliant for the company and its employees.

Below are the top five ways facilities management consultancy can ensure your company’s compliance with health and safety regulations.  

1) Operational Risk Assessments

You might not always recognize operational risks in your organization because you’re too busy running every aspect of your business to keep it productive. Facilities management consultancy allows a knowledgeable and independent third party to conduct comprehensive assessments of your operations to identify all potential operational health and safety risks.

The facility management consultant will assess your equipment, machinery, operational procedures, lighting systems, electrical systems, and the overall physical environment to determine if potential hazards exist. If the consultant identifies dangers that could harm employees or guests, they will develop safety procedures that you could implement to mitigate those risks in the future.

The consultant needs to periodically perform operational risk assessments to ensure your facility complies with health and safety regulations. Just because it might comply right now doesn’t mean it will remain compliant in the weeks and months ahead. Ongoing risk assessments will ensure that it does.

2) Regulatory Compliance Audits

Regulatory compliance audits are much more thorough evaluations of your health and safety risks than the standard assessment. When a facility management consultant audits your operations, they look for health and safety law violations rather than mere risks. They want to ensure your facility complies with all government regulatory requirements to avoid being penalized for noncompliance.

If an audit determines that your facility violates health and safety regulations, the consultant will recommend corrective measures to rectify those violations. These corrective measures include improvements to equipment and workplace safety procedures to fix the compliance gaps in your operations.

Some companies fail audits simply because they don’t keep records of safety inspections and incident reports. If you have neglected record-keeping in your facility, your consultant will create a system for regularly maintaining and updating records. You can use these records to defend against government-led audits if your facility is suspected of noncompliance.

3) Establishing Health and Safety Standards

Many companies lack sufficient health and safety standards. One unexpected government audit can shut down a business indefinitely for failure to comply with health and safety regulations. That doesn’t have to happen to your business.

Facilities management consultancy can evaluate your facility’s current health and safety standards to determine if they sufficiently comply with the law. It may turn out that your facility has inadequate or no health and safety standards to remain in compliance with health and safety standards. If so, your facility management consultant can develop comprehensive health and safety policies and standards to bring your business to compliance.

For instance, the consultant could develop standard operating procedures for operating machinery or handling hazardous materials to ensure your employees perform these actions safely. The consultant may also need to create new workplace safety measures to comply with the international safety standard ISO 45001, which outlines specific requirements for establishing an occupational health and safety management system in your organization.  

4) Implementing an Emergency Response System

Most health and safety regulations require organizations to have an emergency response system to keep people safe during emergencies, such as medical emergencies, fires, or weather disasters. A sufficient emergency response system usually includes fire extinguishers, exit signage, evacuation drills & procedures, sprinkler systems, and other emergency protocols.

Facilities management consultancy can evaluate your organization’s emergency preparedness level to determine whether it complies with emergency guidelines and health and safety regulations. This evaluation process might include conducting fire safety assessments, conducting evacuation drills, and implementing better communication protocols for quickly contacting local emergency responders.

Every business has a moral and legal obligation to implement an emergency response system to protect its employees’ lives and reduce the risk of property damage. Your facility management consultant will ensure that your organization has a quality emergency response system installed to achieve this goal.

5) Workplace Health and Safety Training

Do you need to train your employees on how to uphold health and safety standards in your organization? Facilities management consultancy can help you introduce robust health and safety training sessions to teach employees how to be safe on the job. These training sessions could cover fire safety, material handling, equipment operations, hazard reporting, emergency response procedures, and first aid.

Workplace health and safety training is necessary for new and existing employees to maintain compliance with health and safety laws. Even if you have long-time employees, they have probably forgotten the health and safety procedures taught when they were new. Either that or there could be new health and safety laws that your company must uphold, so you must teach them to all your employees.

Facilities management consultancy can educate your managers and supervisors on teaching and enforcing health and safety standards in your organization. Once this becomes common practice, your employees will grow accustomed to practicing safety on the job.

Request Professional Facilities Management Consultancy

Do you need facilities management consultancy to help ensure your organization complies with health and safety regulations? Tier1FM is a professional facilities management consultancy firm specializing in helping businesses in multiple industries improve their operations to uphold health and safety standards.