Content

What we do

Our dedicated Occupational Health, Safety and Welfare Department (OH,S and W) ensures our workforce remains fit and healthy whilst they are in our employment by providing support for all HFRS employees, including front-line operational firefighters, non-operational service providers like community safety, Workshops, Control and non-uniformed support staff.

Fire fighting is recognised as an inherently hazardous occupation. For this reason, we are continually working alongside our colleagues in Operations and Training, seeking to bring about changes and improvements in health, safety and welfare arrangements.

We employ qualified and competent health and safety advisers to give us professional and sound advice. They work closely in partnership with managers, supervisors and union officials as everyone shares the same goals of providing safe and healthy working environments and ensuring the health, safety and welfare of all our employees, as well as anyone else that may be affected by our work activities.

Our OH, S and W Department


Occupational	Health	Health and Safety Risk Management
Welfare Adviser	Occupational Health Adviser	Health and Safety Adviser
	Occupational Health Physician/ Physiotherapist	Administrator (Part Time)
	Occupational Health Nurse	Health and Safety Compliance Officer Uniformed
	Service Fitness Adviser	Health and Safety Officer
	Occupational Health Administrator

What does this mean?

In simple terms, we hope to enable and support all employees to arrive at work in a fit and healthy condition into a safe working environment where they can perform their duties and then go home to their family and friends in as good a condition as when they arrived.

Employees and their families have a reasonable expectation that their loved ones will not come home injured or ill and in OHSW we will do what we can to enable that to happen. We also do our utmost to ensure that HFRS activities do not have an adverse impact on members of the public or the environment.

When accidents do occur and employees become ill or injured, we then have a series of mechanisms and procedures that click into place to support the early recovery and rehabilitation of our employees. Our aim here is to try and help people recover and get back to work.

Examples of Activities

Occupational Health Activities

Pre-employment and statutory medical assessments
Health screening and surveillance
Post accident/incident assessment and advice
Sickness absence monitoring
Management referrals to the Occupational Health Physician
Self referrals to the Occupational Health Adviser
Counselling
Health education and promotion
Advice on health matters related to work or lifestyle
Advice to management, Health and Safety committees and other official representatives.

Health and Safety Risk Management Activities

Development of Health and Safety policies, procedures and initiatives. (Publication of guidance material and bulletins etc. to keep our employees up to date with any new developments.
Risk assessing all operational and non-operational activities that may have reasonably foreseeable hazards and risks associated with them. (Helping to develop safe equipment, personal protective equipment, precautions and safe systems of work to minimise these risks).
Provision of Health and Safety advice to employees at all levels.
Maintaining a Health and Safety Management system for HFRS. (We have a system of devolved ownership whereby local managers are appointed to take responsibility for their own workplace).
Consultation and liaison with managers and supervisors, staff representative bodies and enforcing authorities.
Consideration and recommendations about Health and Safety training needs.
Review, monitoring and audit of Health and Safety arrangements. (Local managers and union representatives carry out regular workplace safety inspections).
Processing and investigating accidents, injuries and near miss incidents. This includes the identification of trends by the collations and analysis of statistics.