Safety Ribbon Award

Auditing creates important benchmarks of progress

Auditing is a useful tool for helping businesses to understand their current level of compliance in respect of safety and sustainability.

Whilst we offer a detailed initial review, we also offer a simple, low cost, one day audit in safety: Safety Ribbon Award (SRA)

Hosking SRA blue logo-no year        Hosking SRA blue logo-no year        Hosking SRA blue logo-no year

All organisations have a responsibility toward their Health and Safety management; it is important to have robust safety management arrangements in place. HSG65 Guidance, issued by the Health & Safety Executive (HSE) promotes the PLAN, DO, CHECK, ACT model.

  • PLAN: Organise policy, plan arrangements, give direction be strategic
  • DO: Introduce management arrangements based on your plan, carry out risk assessments, implement them, involve and train people
  • CHECK: Monitoring is used to ensure that your arrangements are working effectively (SRA fulfills this)
  • ACT: There should be a high-level review at Director level at least annually to provide information back and allow the management arrangements in place to be adjusted (SRA fulfills this)

The purpose of the Safety Ribbon Award is first and foremost an audit tool to benchmark an organisation’s current compliance level against health & safety law, and to fufill the annual review requirement of HSG65. Organisations are assessed against a broad criteria and achieve a score at the end of the process. If organisations achieve over 85% they have achieved a high standard and may use the logo for a year to demonstrate to staff, clients, visitors, and the business community that a high standard of safety management is being practised every day. We are often asked whether we feel that standards are improving, and the measured result will help organisations to understand this. Hosking Associates specialises in supporting organisations with implementing safety management systems, but the Safety Ribbon Award is open to non-clients as well and provides an independent check to give everyone information on current standards.

The audit is undertaken by a trained specialist and they will prepare your report on the day. The audit is very much a snap shot and not a detailed examination of how all arrangements are being managed. It will provide you with information on your current level of compliance, but it will not provide lots of detailed information on how to fix it. The auditor will highlight the relevant compliance level in the audit criteria and award a rating for each item which will contribute to your score. They may make comments but these will be brief, not against every point and in a note form. Much of the time the auditor spends on site will be looking at documentation and interviewing key people to understand standards at your organisation. It is therefore important for anyone participating to prepare for the audit and ensure that the person responsible for day to day safety management is available. We cannot give marks for information that cannot be located. A brief walk around of the organisation will be undertaken, but not all areas will be visited so some hazards may be present that the auditor did not see on the day.