Display Screen Equipement policy

Display Screen Equipment policy - update

Discussion paper

Background

The current DSE policy was approved by this committee in November 2005. The policy is aimed at ensuring compliance with the Health and Safety (Display Screen Equipment) Regulations, 1992 (updated 2002). One of the requirements of this legislation is that the employer, “ perform a suitable and sufficient analysis of …workstations for the purpose of assessing the health and safety risks to which…persons are exposed..”

A central principal of the policy was a move towards ‘self assessment’ via the university sponsored web pages at www.openerg.com . Prior to this, there had been a requirement on departmental DSE assessors to carry out face to face assessments of all computer users’ workstations, this had been implemented to varying degrees across different departments.

Self assessment in the form of a checklist is an acceptable form of risk assessment provided employees have received the necessary training before being asked to complete one; and provided the completed checklist is then used as a basis for reducing risks by a suitably trained assessor.

Around 50 university staff have been trained as DSE assessors by the OH adviser over the last few years, they are responsible for supporting HoDs and HoSSs in implementation of the policy locally.

Note – this paper refers to ‘staff’, this implies staff who are computer users under the definitions given in the regulations. It does not apply to staff who use a computer very occasionally or where it is not an essential part of their job.

Current situation

a) Review of DSE assessors – carried out by the Occupational Health Adviser (by questionnaire to all assessors) to see how successful they have been at implementing the DSE policy. This showed that departments can be broadly divided into the following:-

Those who have successfully implemented the policy and have robust local procedures for carrying out assessment of new staff and existing users. These are generally small departments and sections.
Those departments who have attempted to implement the policy but with limited success, e.g. due to difficulty getting existing staff to respond to requests to carry out self assessment. For example, one department reported only a 40% response rate despite investing significant resource in chasing staff up.
Those departments who have been unsuccessful in implementation of the DSE policy, mostly as a result of lack of resources (conflict with other responsibilities) and lack of motivation due to awareness of the difficulty of getting staff to take the policy seriously

b) Review of new staff – carried out by the H&S manager to assess the effectiveness of the policy. On average, approximately 50% of new starters reported familiarity with the openerg.com website, knew who their assessor was or knew how to arrange an eye test.

c) www.openerg.com site – this website is the main source of information and training for staff, and also includes questionnaires for self assessment and face to face assessment. The website was designed several years ago and is a little dated in its construction and layout, although the guidance given is still correct. This website is hosted externally due to concerns raised at the time of launch about IT security risks related to hosting an interactive site.

Proposal

a) New Starters

The current policy will remain as it stands and DSE assessors will be required to implement it robustly on behalf of their HoDs/HoSSs.

Assessors will be required to contact all new starters (using a standard letter produced by the HS and E office) to advise them of the need to carry out self training (via the web site) and self assessment. The assessor should then keep documented evidence that this has taken place (e.g. a copy of the self assessment summary). For new employees who do not respond, the assessor will be required to send at least one reminder, copied to the HoD/HoSS. Continued failure to comply may be considered as a disciplinary matter or the HoD/assessor may pursue an alternate means of carrying out training/assessment.

A mini-audit of this will be carried out by the HS&E office in 6-12 months time.

b) Existing Staff

The policy will be revised to adopt a more pragmatic approach to ongoing self assessment, emphasising the responsibility of individuals to take action where necessary. The priority will be on:-

ensuring that all staff are made aware that they have a personal responsibility to work safely; and to undertake self assessment and training if they have not done so previously (or if this needs repeating for any reason):
ensuring that all staff know where to get information, and where to get help if they have difficulties:
ensuring that the effort put into implementation of the university DSE policy is proportionate to the level of risk, and to the likelihood of the policy reducing that risk:
ensuring we comply with the relevant regulations.

As part of policy implementation, a letter/e mail will be distributed to DSE assessors annually by the HS&E office to be forwarded to all computer users. This will remind staff of the obligations on them, and the importance of seeking help if difficulties arise. Based on this, the assessors can make an assumption that staff have the necessary information and have taken all relevant steps to ensure their personnel wellbeing and to comply with university policy and the legal requirements.

Assessors will also be required to send out further prompts e.g. if there are major office re-organisations between annual reminders.

Assessors will not be required to seek confirmation from individual staff that they have visited the web site or carried out self assessment.

Assessors will be required to keep records of reminders sent out and of any self assessments which are forwarded to them subsequently.

They will also be required to follow-up any problems raised by staff, and keep proper records of this and to involve Occupational Health where appropriate.

c) www.openerg.com website

This will be revised to:-

· Update the content where necessary

· Improve ‘flow through’ so that the pages act more as a training package and less as a set of random pages

· Allow staff to automatically send a copy of any assessment they carry out to the relevant DSE assessor

· Improve the branding of the site to make clear that it is a university resource

· Consider whether it is appropriate to move the training pages to a university managed site rather than running it through an external organisation.

This committee is asked to discuss the above proposals, and, if appropriate, approve implementation and updating of the DSE policy accordingly.

Author - Wendy Jones