What is Health Surveillance?

There are an estimated 1.8 million workers in Great Britain suffering with work-related ill health. That’s 36.8 million lost working days, with an average of 4.6 per employee. If your team consists of 20 people, that equates to 92 working days lost per year. Can your business afford that? Employers have a duty of care to their employees, requiring them to take all reasonable steps to ensure the health, safety, and wellbeing of their employees.

So, what is Health Surveillance?

Health surveillance is the regular and ongoing monitoring of an employee’s health with the aim of protecting them from health risks at work. It will help you identify any weaknesses in your control measures and risk assessments and ensure that your employees’ health isn’t being harmed while working for you, resulting in fewer sick days, higher productivity, and enabling you to deliver projects on time and within budget.

Do I need to provide Health Surveillance?

If you or your employees work in an environment that could adversely affect your or their health, despite control measures having been put in place, health surveillance is likely a legal requirement. It is a legal requirement for employers to ensure the health of their employees is not affected by their work. The first step to establishing whether Health Surveillance is required is to consult your risk assessment. If your risk assessment has identified a hazardous substance or task which cannot be removed and therefore keeps some risk involved, further steps will need to be taken. Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) is usually the first step identified, worn to prevent exposure or risk of injury. but it can never be assumed that PPE offers complete protection as it may not always be reliable, despite training, maintenance, and regular checks. If your risk assessment identifies a health risk and your only form of protection is PPE, the failure to regularly monitor the health of your employees could result in finding that you have failed in your duty of care. This could result in legal action. It has previously. The only way of ensuring that employees are protected, and not exposed to the hazard, is to monitor the health of each employee with assessments that have been deemed appropriate to the requirements of your risk assessment. This is known as Health Surveillance. If you are in any doubt as to whether you need to provide Health Surveillance, get in touch and we can advise you based on your specific circumstances.

Am I legally required to provide Health Surveillance?

If your employees are exposed to the following, health surveillance may be legally required:

noise (loud machinery and vehicles etc.)
vibration (hand-held power tools such as grinders or road breakers and hand-guided equipment)
ionising radiation (x-rays for example are used on concrete to identify and locate rebar, conduit, post tension cables and other embedded objects)
asbestos (if working on old buildings)
lead (used for roof flashings or in older buildings)
compressed air (air driven tools such as pneumatic jackhammers)
substances which are hazardous to health (found in items such as paints, foams, and glues among many other things)

Ask yourself these questions:

Is there a possible adverse health effect?
Is the adverse health effect linked to exposure?
Is it likely the health effect will occur as a result of exposure?
Are there techniques which can identify signs of the adverse health effect?

If the answer to these questions is yes, Health Surveillance should be carried out.

How often does Health Surveillance need to be performed?

Health surveillance should be performed on new starters to provide baseline results. Health Surveillance should then be repeated at regular intervals, the timing of which will be determined by your risk assessment and current legislation. This will often result in Health Surveillance assessments being performed on a yearly basis. When Health Surveillance assessments have been performed, we will advise as to whether Health Surveillance intervals should change.

Speak to your employees about Health Surveillance:

It is important to consult your employees on Health Surveillance. Not only will this encourage them to commit to Health Surveillance, but also comply with control measures and potentially even point out risks which may have been missed and help make sure your control measures are practical.

How Aardvark Occupational Health can help:

Aardvark Occupational Health can advise what assessments your employees will need based on the hazards they may be exposed to. We will work to your requirements, providing Health Surveillance when and where you need it with our fleet of Mobile Medical Centres, equipped with all we require to perform any required assessments. Once the assessments have been performed, we will interpret the results for each employee, providing details such as their fitness for task with the relevant exposure and when each employee will next need a Health Surveillance assessment. We can also then advise on any further steps that need to be taken where an employee is deemed to have work-related ill health. You should then use the results of health surveillance to identify the effectiveness of your control measures and any additional steps you may need to take to improve the working conditions for your employees.