I'm currently overhauling the H&S Policy of my new company and it has took me back to a disagreement i had a couple of years back at a previous employer with an external auditor who was vetting us for membership of an association.

The auditor in quesrion felt that our xompany H&S policy wasn't "big enough", even though it covered all the necessary bases and satisifed CHAS, SMAS, Achilles and a numerous large UK contractors.

He felt that in order for a policy to be "compliant" it had to include actual document templates (templates of everything from DSE assessments to toolbox talks, inspection sheets, procedures, safe systems of work etc). I strongly disagreed, and still do to this day.

In my opninion, so long as my policy states something along the lines of "a risk assessment must be completed before starting using form HS001" or "fuel on site must be stored in accordance with company guidance note HS002" then as far as i am concerned it does what it needs to do wihtout becoming a huge lumbering document full of cut and paste copies of other documents.

What are everybody else's thoughts/approaches towards this...?

Edited by user 07 February 2017 16:56:54(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

I can see both sides of the argument. Personally I have a preference for concise documents as opposed to War and Peace which nobody bothers to read - but then I'm not an auditor or a consultant. I would have thought that unless there is a clear breach of standards or legislation the content of company documents such as H&S Policy should be at the discretion of the author.

I have written a whole raft of safety policies and find it acceptable to either have policies with no templates as well as including templates in the appendix of policies.

I'm guessing you need to think of the intended recipritant, are they someone who just needs a copy of your policy, or is it for practical use by your company showing the accepted methods and templates used.

You could complete a seperate file with all your templates included in that and simply refer back.

Morning all,

Thanks for taking the time to reply. It's interesting to get some views on this and good see that i wasn't completely out of order for standing my ground!

From memory, our policy was around 60+ pages and had clear, concise and easily understandable policies & procedures in place for all of the usual construction related H&S topics. He felt however that a "good" policy should be 2 or 3 times the size of this (he stated this without even opening it!) He felt that it wasn't good enough to just refer to a document and that the document had to be in there.

Who was this auditor- I can imagine a policy being criticised for being not detailed enough or not relevant, for not referencing legal requirements, or difficult to read and understand? The idea that policy is wrong because it is not ‘big enough’ is ridiculous. What size should it be? How many paragraphs for each employee?  Or should it relate to turn over?

Throwback to when BSI launched BS 5750 and the tiered manuals Policy, Procedures, Instructions with all the horrendous cross referencing.

Templates were often included as we are talking the days before computers were wide spread - how does the employee know they are using the correct form? Here Mr Auditor this page in the manual shows them, and here is the same form at their work station - it was the golden age for paper shuffler employment.

Personally I now work much leaner and have a controlled document register which lists the current revision of a particular template with hyperlink so that any one needing the latest version clicks to open. Even this register is only referenced as a hyperlink within the Document Control policy as are all template references throughout the management system documentation.

Originally Posted by: Roundtuit

Throwback to when BSI launched BS 5750 and the tiered manuals Policy, Procedures, Instructions with all the horrendous cross referencing.

Templates were often included as we are talking the days before computers were wide spread - how does the employee know they are using the correct form? Here Mr Auditor this page in the manual shows them, and here is the same form at their work station - it was the golden age for paper shuffler employment.

Personally I now work much leaner and have a controlled document register which lists the current revision of a particular template with hyperlink so that any one needing the latest version clicks to open. Even this register is only referenced as a hyperlink within the Document Control policy as are all template references throughout the management system documentation.

I do the same where I am currently. You split your system into individual documents that way when one changes only people that need to know about that specific part need to be informed.  

Previous employment similar, but I created a database to control all electronic documents ( so still hyperlink), which also controlled rev level and details of changes, anything printed was considered uncontrolled. NEBOSH has very little to do with management systems (It did cover them a little). NB the database ( not access) stopped people asking (unnecessarily) for full copies of our system :o)

How about a cryptic clue to whom?

I agree with Peter above. I have never seen a policy 60+ pages long! Maybe a 2-3pp in very rare cases. It makes me wonder about the size of your H&S Manual, who drafted it and how many...years it took!

We use a single page as well for all our systems and the details are included in our Manuals. Which lead to our detailed processes and procedures.

4.2 of the OHSAS18001 lists a few requirements. No need to over extend it to crazy levels, no need to include all the details. My personal opinion is to keep is short and succinct. As said before, we have the Manuals to include all the rest.