The part that belongs to HR
Step 1 / 3·No factory does not mean no duty
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Learning objectives — after this module you will:
- Identify the safety duties that sit with HR
- Know the duties apply even without a factory
- Recognise the record groups that must be kept
No factory does not mean no duty
Clear up the most common misreading of scope.
Many service, trading and technology businesses assume occupational safety is a factory matter. That is an expensive misreading: the duties to train, to run periodic health checks and to keep records apply to every employer, whatever the sector.
What differs is the degree, not whether the duty exists. An office of thirty people must still train its employees on safety, still run health checks at least annually, still hold an emergency response plan, and still keep records proving it did.
Most employers penalised in this area were not penalised because an accident happened. They were penalised because they could not produce the records showing the periodic duties had been carried out.
Penalised for missing records, not for accidents
The first question in an inspection is 'show me the most recent training records'. Training that happened but has no attendance list, syllabus or trainer record is, on paper, training that never happened.