I have been tasked with creating a SHEQ Handbook for my current employer. The handbook needs to include a guide to all things safety, risks involved in the workplace and also our specific processes. I am looking for any example handbooks that other companies may have, as a starting point. Any examples would be greatly appreciated.

An actual handbook, yes.

As mentioned, any examples greatly appreciated.

Intended audiance - staff and visitors.

Intended use - office, meeting rooms etc.

No more than 10 pages I would say, but this is the reason I am hoping to recieve examples to get a better idea.

At one employer (Pre Computer) we had an employee handbook presented in a ring binder. Updates were sent to every active employee, required signing a receipt and returning replaced pages.

This confirmation of notification is obviously omitted when materials are merely posted to the electronic wind in the hope the intended recipient can both access and understand them.

The first question becomes can every employee readily (and willingly - there are the disenfranchised) access the company intranet?

The second question is by personal log-in or through a shared system?

The third question is how do you ensure all employees are informed in a timely manner of updates?

We then come back to the tedium that "in the event of...." how do you prove?

That mark on a piece of paper is just that and it doesn't matter what form of semi-legalise you place around it. Simlarly that electronic ip tag is just a tag (my actual completed on-line course count is a lot lower than those my log-in has completed).

There also needs to be access to the archived material - that which was in place at the time of an event, not the subsequent correction.

Any physical handbook should be compact and cover general matters to reduce the number of updates and make it readable (hit someone with more than four pages of purely text and they switch off) - site access, parking, fire precautions, accident reporting, first-aid provision, PPE are common topics.

You should have additional books at point of use for specific sections/departments or equipment - does the receptionist really need to know about the 4MT brake press?

As to your subsequent posting 10 pages would be way too much for visitors as a booklet - unescorted visitors have been managed using either a site induction video or power point given by the site contact. Here again there would be more information than required by office staff - permit to work, hot works, waste management

No more than 10 pages? What environment are you working in? Unless very low Hazard/Risk and a small employer unless it just contains loads of links i dont think (excuse the pun) it would be worth the paper its written on. I think you need to define "all things SHEQ" before you even start.

Sorry if that sounds negative - and im all in favour of maeking documents as small as possible.

Hi Max

As others have said any such handbook would grow in proportion to the range of risks that may arise in an organisation.

To be honest, I think the last thing I ever saw that vaguely resembled what you are envisaging was over 300 pages of A4 and had been produced at great expense by my employer to be, and purported to be the company health and safety policy.

It got ditched on the first day of my new job.

My comment to the Director who had taken the lead in creating my post that a document explaining how to guard a circular saw on a construction site was unlikely to be assimilated by a typist in our head office.

So, we produced a two page health and safety policy statement.

Then a Manual in parts.

So some parts covering all the key procedures and other parts with guidance on particular risk issues - but even this "Manual" did not attempt to cover all possible eventualities.

We had a print run of about 300 (roughly one copy per 5 staff) in ring binders so that amendments to PARTS could be done easily.....and we did include a confirmation form where a holder was asked to return a page to say that they had received any update. Always took some chasing to get all the confirmations back.

Just about everything that was put into ring binders was in white binders so our HSW Manual was in a green binder so that it stood out from the rest.

We DIDN'T expect ALL of our staff to be conversant with the entirety of the content and this was made abundantly clear in the introduction.

But that was at the start of the internet age. These days the norm is for everything to be electronically accessible with hyperlinks to cross-references.

So, I suggest you define what you need more closely.

All staff need some information.

Then some need other information, some others need something which may be very different.

The art is to work out who needs what and that depends (in part) on where they stand in the management chain and what they actually do.

Good luck, Peter

I produce an A6 (pocket) sized printed handbook.

All of the above comments are valid.

However, if you are clear of the purpose, the benefits and actually acknowledge the limitations then a printed handbook still can have its place.

For my business, we are an engineering design and install company where the install technicians do not always have easy access to the electronic document system.  On larger jobs we also use labour only contractors who we need to get info to without spending days/week onboarding them.

The handbook itself is image and colour biased and less is more in terms of text.  It is only designed as a ready reference guide.  

Yes its near on impossible to keep up to date.  Yes its a pain to get printed.  Yes its available electronically.  No it doesnt get universal buy in.  No it doesn't give comprehensive instruction.  No its not a one stop solution.

BUT, get the content and presentation right and it can be a very accessible communiction tool as part of a wider communication strategy.

And it's not just SHE but SHEQ!  The few manuals I've seen that attempt to cover that much of a range are many, many pages long and no one would ever dream of printing them out.  Not least because of the "E" impact of wasting all that paper and ink ...