New research published by the Forum of Private Business (FPB) has revealed that small businesses spend on average 14 hours / month coping with health and safety regulations:
The FPB's Chief Executive, Nick Goulding, says the burden is becoming too heavy for smaller firms: "The statistics show the amount of time being spent on health and safety is a real distraction from the day-to-day running of a smaller business."
FPB members were asked how long they spend dealing with health and safety in the workplace in an average month. They were asked to take into account time taken to understand updates to regulation, implementation, action and monitoring.
The results showed that 47% of respondents spent more than seven hours a month coping with health and safety regulations, while 19% spent between a day and a week every month coming to terms with health and safety red tape. The average time spent was 14 hours / month.
Time-consuming:
Respondents were asked how time-consuming health and safety regulations were in terms of both administration and time spent understanding them. 57% said administration was very time consuming, while 56% said understanding health and safety regulations was very time consuming.
Mr Goulding said that on both fronts smaller businesses were struggling: "These findings show that owner-managers not only feel that health and safety form-filling is extremely time-consuming, but also that keeping up to date and understanding changes is also a burden. The amount of time spent on these areas replaces the time spent on supervision, which could have a greater impact on safety."
Disproportionate to the benefits:
Members were asked to show whether time spent understanding health and safety regulations and their administration was disproportionate to the benefits or need for the regulation.
Sixty percent said they felt time spent administering health and safety regulations was disproportionate to the benefits of or need for the regulations. Meanwhile 64% said that time spent understanding the regulations was disproportionate to the benefits of or need for them.
Mr Goulding believes that the good intentions of many regulations are lost when they are implemented: "What is obvious from our research is that health and safety regulations are seen by many of our members as neither beneficial nor necessary when compared to the amount of time they prevent them from running their businesses."
The research was carried out ahead of the common commencement date for many new regulations on 6 April. Among those due to be introduced next month are proposed changes to the Construction Design Management Regulations (CDM) which the FPB believes will place many new responsibilities onto smaller businesses having building work carried out.
Health & Safety Guide:
A successful business is dependent on the health and welfare of its employees and customers. The business-owner is responsible for ensuring a safe working environment and minimising risk created by the operation of the business. The FPB's Health & Safety Guide is designed to help do this with the minimum of fuss. Easy-to-follow sections cover general and sector-specific guidance on complying with health and safety regulations and the 'comply-as-you-complete' format ensures the business owner can stay fully up to date with the law simply and easily.