You may think that your office is unlikely to ever see anyone suffering an injury and requiring first aid, and you’re quite possibly correct in your assumption. But if you are an employer in the UK, you are required by law to make certain allowances for health and safety. If you don’t do these things you are breaking the law, and potentially compromising the health of your employees – as well as leaving yourself wide open to litigation.

Not to worry though. The steps required are actually quite simple and can easily be worked through with minimal time, effort and fuss, and you won’t be up to your neck in UK business documents! Here’s what you need to do.

The Health and Safety (First-Aid) Regulations of 1981 require all employers to provide appropriate equipment, facilities for their employees should they get injured or sick while at work. Businesses of all sizes are covered (including those with less than 5 people and the self employed) though the definition of what becomes "appropriate" changes depending on the size of the business in question.

An assessment should be carried out by the employer to determine what is required in each instance, and documents are readily available to help you manage this. However, as a general rule of thumb, you should consider the following as a guide to the bare minimum required:

Self Employed People

Obviously in this instance you will require sufficient first aid to provide for yourself alone. After making a hazard risk assessment, you should be well aware of cover you’ll need ranging from a small first aid box if you’re doing simple IT work from home, all the way up to adequate supplies for a road accident if your job involves driving long distances.

Offices and Low Risk Workplaces

Subject to your own risk assessments which you will want to document, you probably won’t need a trained first aider for workplaces with less than 50 employees but you should make sure there is at least one appointee to take charge in the event of an emergency. Once you get to around 400 employees, you should consider a first aid room, though for less workers than this simply supplying enough first aid boxes to cover the number should be sufficient.

Workplaces with Greater Risk

Of course, there are plenty of workplaces with greater risk than offices. As the danger increases, so should the measures you take, moving from shops and offices to warehouses and engineering all the way up to construction sites, chemical manufacturers and those working with dangerous machinery. In these cases, a thorough risk assessment needs to be carried out with extra care, and you would probably need at least one first aider for every fifty employees and at least one fully equipped first aid room. You would also be wise to provide documents for your business outlining first aid procedure in such a dangerous environment.

When calculating exactly what you need, bear in mind that you are not legally obliged to provide for those not employed by you (e.g: children at a school, clients visiting the office), but it is still worth considering your supplies so that you are covered in the event of someone not in your employ getting injured on your premises.

Although you may think that such steps are unnecessary, the amount of time, effort and money required to ensure your business’ documents and safety policy are legally above board is a small price to pay when compared to the potential costs of sick employees and costly fines for not following the law!