Help is at hand for small and medium-sized companies who struggle to find the time to review and improve their health and safety performance.

Findings from a survey commissioned by businesslink.gov.uk, the government's national website providing practical guidance to SMEs, revealed that time is the major barrier preventing businesses from implementing a full health and safety policy.

To help organisations save time and potentially money by improving their health and safety performance, businesslink.gov.uk has launched a new free and confidential tool for businesses to assess their health and safety measures. Teaming up with the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) and the Association of British Insurers (ABI), businesslink.gov.uk has created the 'Health and safety performance indicator'.

This tool provides a benchmark against other businesses from all types of sectors and sizes. It will also enable them, if they wish to review their performance with their insurance brokers to help them get the best terms possible. A greater awareness of the benefits that better systems and procedures from improved health and safety could help businesses to reduce their overheads, however, the research showed that businesses could be missing out with almost a quarter of respondents not knowing how they could make savings.

Other benefits were also considered important, the research found factors such as staff welfare (70%) and increased productivity (48%) were incentives for better health and safety management. In many cases businesses were aware that they could do more to improve health and safety but obstacles such as time and cost prevented them from reviewing their performance.

The new tool from businesslink.gov can now help businesses quickly and easily realise the benefits and savings that can be gained from improved health and safety processes in a time effective and practical way.

Visit businesslink.gov.uk for a free health and safety check.

See also: Funding for health and safety needs

Related topics: Business Link