Safety at work is the business owner’s responsibility, and if you are an employer, you will have a legal responsibility to protect your employees. Fire safety responsibility can be allocated to a member of staff, who must arrange training, a workplace risk assessment and implement appropriate measures for safety purposes.
Training
Fire safety training is a legal obligation within the workplace, and singularly the most powerful tool to help manage the risk of fire. Training should be delivered to all new employees and refreshers offered as per regulations.
Prevention
Learning how to prevent fire is crucial and differs between workplaces. Learn your products and machinery, and their inherent risks. Deliver this knowledge within a training package, updating staff if a new product or machine comes into use.
Detection
Another legal obligation; fire detection systems can range from the most basic to a sophisticated alarm panel. Employees will need to know how to use these systems, how to ascertain the area in which the fire has been detected, and how to reset them should an error occur.
Escape resources
Escape resources can include fire doors, fire ladders, evacuation chairs, and escape hammers and axes. As part of ongoing training, all your employees will need to know how to use these items of escape equipment.
Assembly points
A fire assembly point serves the purpose of making certain that everyone has a place to assemble in the event of a fire, negating a panicked scattering if the fire alarm goes off. It’s also a crucial part of ensuring everyone has escaped the building safely. Your assembly point will need to be far enough from the building to offer protection from the heat of the fire, but close enough to make sure that people are able to find it. It needs to be clearly sign-posted and staff should be regularly reminded of assembly instructions.
