My new employer has an agressive growth plan with a view to double in size within the next 12months and they have asked me to review the effect on H&S policies and procedures once we hit 500 employees and >£50m turnover.

My initial instinct is that (other than the 5 people) there are no other thresholds with safey and therefore there are no additional obligations as we grow, but it is more important than ever to make sure the foundations of our H&S practices are sound and robust. 

However, this is new territory for me having worked for a much smaller company previously, and therefore I would appreciate any thoughts and advice from those with more experience of this, hence the post.

Thanks in advance for any help 

One thing that you need to think about when you scale up the business is comms: how you communicate across the various departments. In a small organisation you are all close together and can talk to each other directly and informally. As the organisation gets bigger it becomes necessary for the systems to become more formal and this might lead to silo thinking ie each department focusing on their thing and important issues which were dealt with informally being left out. I am talking about things like who maintains which bits of kit.  What counts as fabric of the building as opposed to building services? You need to keep a handle on it or you will find that they might be missed.

Don't forget to scale you 1st aid facilities as you expand too. A simple first aid kit tucked away in a cupboard for a small office is not going to cut it for an entire office block.

It would help if we had an idea what sort of industry we are looking at. For example, if this a manufacturing company you will probably need to think about what sort of safety training the supervisors/managers will need to ensure the message is communicated effectively. For a warehouse operation it may be necessary to look at larger pedestrian walkways to effectively and safely move the workforce about. And so on..

Thank you all for such quick and helpful responses!

We are in the fire protection industry (suppression and detection) so have management functions (design & project management) and admin (customer service, finance etc) functions in 5 offices and then maintenance and installation work across several hundred sites across all business sectors; so a wide variety of things to consider!! 

I would also consider the impact of such business plans on management. Will the focus on H&S be lessened because their business objectives are so tough that they cannot spend time on H&S? Will expansion overtake the mindset, depending on how the objectives are measured and rewarded this could have a massive impact, particularly with availablity for training, completing inspections, attending meetings etc. Also, similar to a previous comment - who is responsible for completing certain actions and activities in the new world, how will this be monitored and how will assurance be provided to the board.