Ensuring Your Premises Is Safe From A Fire Requires Much More Than Fire Safety Arrangements
The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 (RRO) is now in its sixth year running as the prime legislation for fire safety. When this legislation first changed, it shifted the responsibility from your local fire brigade onto the shoulders of the Responsible Person within an organisation. Previously, this person, who is now considered the one responsible for fire safety, has usually had no previous experience, knowledge or interest in the topic of fire safety in the workplace. This is because until the RRO came into force an organisation didn’t have much responsibility in terms of the general fire safety matters in a building. They would always be assured by the fire brigades visit, the issue of a fire certificate and the declaration that all is A-OK. But, things have changed now; they have done for six years and the Responsible Person cannot continue to blame a lack of knowledge on the system. They have no choice but to learn, understand and follow their duties under this legislation. Competence and empowerment is needed. Not only should they know their duties individually, they also need to ensure that the whole organisation is equally aware of how important fire safety is. Fire Safety within an entire workplace should not be a one man band. Fire safety is a corporate commitment. It should be a condition of employment to ensure that each individual understands how important fire safety is taken within the organisation. Before fire safety arrangements and modern products, comes the old fashioned method of starting at the beginning and spreading the word to form a fire safety culture.
Don’t just follow the law
Compliance is not only an obligatory measure for thousands of companies universally. Organisations should be turning their attention to the importance of fire safety in the workplace. Life safety is the ultimate consequence if your building is not safe from fire. The welfare of employees, visitors and contractors in the workplace is the Responsible Persons ultimate protection from a fire occurring in their premises. Compliance is also not just for ethical, moral or legal reasons, but because quite simply; it makes good business sense.
Good business sense has proven to be directly linked to business performance. Adopting a workplace that reflects the best approach, values, perception and approach to fire safety is the crucial aspect of a fire safety culture. It is the atmosphere that shapes safe behaviours and actions and results in everyone’s responsibility to safety as a significant part of their work. The results can be recognized to a culture that embraces safety and empowers employees to maintain a commitment to safety in everything they do. It should be valued by every employee. A fire safety culture is not something that can just appear from the woodworks. It takes time, effort, encouragement and overall a positive management system so that it drives each level of personnel to focus on fire safety and the elimination of unsafe hazards and risks rather than just meeting regulatory requirements.
Following the Leader
Top level management is where it all begins. We all understand that the managerial board tends to dominate the organisations judgement and decisions. This is also the case with fire safety in the workplace. Every organisation should have a driving point which will always start from effective managers with the correct attitudes and skills. Therefore it is essential for top management to have a genuine positive and strong attitude to fire safety culture. There needs to be a feeling among employees that the systems are confidently correct and trusted. A culture needs strong top-down support, good communication, established processes and built-in accountability. This begins and ends with the Responsible Person. An active fire safety organisation that incorporates all levels from the organisation is an excellent resource. These are the employees who can often spot the hazards and risks that managerial personnel won’t get a chance to see. Their reports should be taken seriously and followed up on, to provide real motivation for a safe premise. It will demonstrate leadership and encouragement. The Responsible Person must never forget though that he has the ultimate responsibility.
Do you feel like you need a helping hand?
Don’t feel overwhelmed with it all. Once the Responsible Person has an understanding of legislation and fire safety in the workplace, it should start to all fall into place. Creating a fire safety culture will spread the load. It will be a unified commitment and you will not feel like the sole ranger in any of this. Training is a great source of not only learning and understanding of fire safety in the workplace but encouragement from fully fledged fire safety consultants who have been through these thousands of times. Solutions Fire Safety maintain the theory that Fire Safety Training is the best source of drive, to empower the Responsible Person to go out into their workplace premises and use all their knowledge to effectively improve the fire safety within the organisation. We aim for the Responsible Person to feel confident enough to carry out the Fire Risk Assessment and act on the significant findings, improve fire safety strategies, procedures and arrangements and above all increase the fire safety awareness throughout the entire organisation to gain a fire safety culture.
For further information or questions please do not hesitate to contact Solutions Fire Safety on 0845 601 2632 or alternatively email service@solutionsfire.co.uk
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