The company I currently work for have implemented what they call Generic DSE Assessments. They have concluded that, as the building layout, furniture, IT, temperature, chairs etc are pretty much the same, their DSE assessments can be broken down into 'areas of the building' - omitting the need to individually assess each workstation / user and instead, have an overall assessment detailing areas of the office!

I have my views, what do you think?

Simon

Oh dear Simon

I am quite worried that your company have taken this approach. How can you expect employees to interface with the equipment in the same way, sit at the same height, use the keyboard and mouse in exactly the same way, have the same eyesight, need I go on..................

Steven

When I dug deeper they stated that during induction they provide guidance on keying-in, posture etc and if any problems do occur - discuss with your Line Manager!

This route has been taken to:

a) cut costs (onerous responsibility throughout multiple offices);
b) self DSE assessment route was unreliable (always chasing completed forms).

Thanks for your initial comments, keep them rolling...

Sean - in short they don't!

Within my company, I sell H&S, therefore have no involvement in the internal H&S System (unfortunately)!

I have put forward my concerns and suggested their new approach is about as water tight as a colander!

They are adamant this approach is acceptable and compliant! Even rubber stamped by a CMIOSH!

Generic DSE assessments - another example of paper safety! The whole purpose of the DSE regs is to identify individual requirements. I am not a great fan of the self-assessment approach, but I also accept that for most organisations it is the most practical means of applying the DSE Regs.

The risks with DSE are in my view generally low / very low. I am not aware of any prosecutions related to DSE although I may be corrected if someone has evidence otherwise.
In the past I have so much OTT H&S effort put into low level risk assessments.

The company need a policy to cover DSE that includes operators / users being given information / instruction on how to recognise and control the risks. nb there is plent of good simple guidance on the HSE web site to cover this.

Following the completion of the self assessment by the now "trained" user / operator that is reviewed and signed off by the manager. The large majority of issues raised from this should be discussed and resolved. A few cases may require a more detailed assessment and adjustment to fit the person to the DSE.

There are many pieces of HS Legislation that will be removed in the coming months that covers risks that can be covered satisfactorily with general legislation, I think that DSE regs may be one of them.
Steve

I recommend David Cameron scrap this piece of legislation and incorporate it into the Welfare Regs.:-)

It is one thing to make populist statements, it is quite another to explain that EC Directives msut be transposed into GB legislation, otherwise GB faces non-transposition proceedings and penalties.

The DSE Directive has specific requirements that form the schedule to the DSE Regulations that forms the basis of the DSE Risk assessment--and even if it is amalmageted with Welfare regs, the requiremets will not change at all.

Refer to the Republic of Ireland "Safety, Health and Welfare at Work (General Application) Regulations 2007" that has our equivalent of Welfare, PUWER, PPE, Electricity at Work, Working at Height, Noise, Vibrationat Work, Young persons, Nursing & expectant mothers, Night/shift working (the safety aspects of working time regs!), First Aid & DSEAR in a sigle set of regulation, but with diffrent chapters and all the relevant schedules --the outcomes expected will be the SAME, no reduction in burden, except one will claim to have "reduced" 13 regulations into one.

Also, we as practioners have to decide on the usefulness of the ACOP/Guidance material that is not a part of regulations and probably least understood by small business so that they become victims of oversell by the "health and safety industry"

With regards to para 39, the element that is missing for me is 'Other aspects of workstations would still need to be assessed individually through information collected from users, but this could then be restricted to subjective factors.'

This is not happening, therefore, a reliance is made on this generic approach.

Whether the DSE Regs should be abolished is, in the context of this thread academic. The requirement is, at this time, the requirement.

Many thanks for your thoughts thus far.

Simon

I worked for a company with about 250 staff all of whom used a DSE both desktops and laptops. I used a company which must remain nameless but it has a very good reputation. The advantage of using this company was the dse assessments were done by the person who used the workstation. The person was required to undertake a short training course which explained all they needed to know about assessing thier own workstation, this was followed by a test of thier understanding of the methods used before they could undertake the actual assessment. I was able to read thier yesy results and speak to them in person to cover any problem areas they may have. They then completed the assessment and I was given a copy of the assessment for my records. The process took some time to get people to do it, but when they started it took only a few weeks to get them done, there were a few who just would not do it and thier access to the system was cut off which meant they soon toed the line. This type of system does two basic things it gets the DSE assessments done fairly quickly, and gives each user the basic understanding of what is involved and why. If anyone is interested in using this system PM me and I will let you have the company's name.

We were inspected by the HSE Inspector a number of years ago on the back of a reportable industrial disease. After discussions with the HSE on what they interpretated as what was required we have a two stage process.

Users complete a User Workstation Checklist (one for all workstations they use) where they answer a series of questions relating to desk, chair, screen, keyboard etc. They are also asked if they suffering prolonged aches, pains associated with working on any of their workstations.

These checklists are then reviewed by a trained DSE assessor. If they do not identify any issues then no significant risks are identified and no need for any further consideration. However, the review also affords the opportunity to identify any minor issues such as a person not knowing how to adjust their chair or screen controls. These are picked up and addressed at a local level.

If an issue is identified then the assessor completes a detailed assessment considering the ergonomic requirements and recommendations (desk size etc) and this detailed assessment is then stored on our central electronic system which sets a review date and any actions are monitored through this. The assessor does not conduct a full detailed assessment all the time but focusses on the issues raised by the user and the answers they have given and so completes the relevant sections.

It may seem an onerous task but with over 4,000 users we need to be able to have a system which we can pick up on potential problems as previously we have had civil claims which we could not defend and therefore had to settle.

Would also say that we have only had just over 200 detailed assessments needed to be undertaken compared to several hundered general activity risk assessments!!

We have not had any issues since the system came in either from the HSE or civil claims.

Quite agree and it is the department managers who get the checklists completed and reviewed. We have an electronic recording system to enable us centrally to monitor the situation and more importantly any actions which may arise are monitored (as a deadline date has to be agreed and anything over 2 months past this date is picked up by us centrally and chased).