Employers have responsibilities for the health and safety of their employees. They are also responsible for any visitors to their premises such as customers, suppliers and the general public.
As a company you need to ensure that visitors and contractors are aware of your Health and Safety procedures and that every visitor to your company is aware of the correct procedure in the event of an emergency. An employer has a ‘duty of care’ to look after, as far as possible, employees health, safety and welfare while at work and this includes all visitors.
Here are 7 key reasons why you should maintain a visitor management system:
Health and Safety information is printed clearly on to visitor systems and badges (this can in most cases be personalised to your site), with instructions detailing company procedures and exits. This ensures that all visitors have the information to hand in event of an emergency should they be parted from their host.
A signature can also be incorporated on to visitor systems, ensuring Health and Safety guidelines are acknowledged by your visitors, stating that you have informed them of fire, accident and evacuation procedures.
In the case of schools, to comply with the Department for Education (DfE) safeguarding legislation, all visitors and contractors must sign in and out of school buildings.
“Ofsted inspectors may take into account the extent to which the school: Takes reasonable steps to ensure that pupils are safe on the school site, for example by monitoring visitors or volunteers or those using the premises during school time”. (Ofsted – The evaluation schedule for schools, 2011).
This is a huge security concern if something should happen on your premises, as there would be no traceability of who was on site or who was responsible as a host that day.
By issuing visitor ID passes, it becomes easy at a glance to identify and validate every visitor to your building / site. Passes can also be used to control vehicles or identify temporary staff and contractors.
Providing an accurate audit trail is essential in the food industry to comply with the FSA. Although many food manufacturing sites put strict Health and Safety regulations in place for visitors and contractors, most fail to have an auditable trace of the signing in process, even with some of the most used traditional paper pass systems. By this, we mean having signed consent from the visitor that they have read the Health and Safety information, and a copy of every visitor’s answers to Health and Hygiene questions.
Contractors themselves must comply with all relevant Health and Safety Law and Company’s Health and Safety rules, and have provided copies of current Public and Employees Liability insurance as well as a method statement on request. Implementing contractor management systems and permits to work in addition to basic visitor management systems will help with the effective control of contractors.
Why Maintain a Visitor Management System?
How we can help
Here at Safetynet, we uniquely manufacture and develop specialist solutions in visitor management. So, whether you’re looking for paper or digital sign-in solutions, our team can help.
Take a look at the following links below to view to find out more about our specialist solutions.
Print Solutions
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Visitor Sign-In Systems |
Electronic Solutions
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