Employers

• The PPE Regulation (EU) 2016/425 classifies harmful noise as a Category 3 (serious) risk – which means employers are obliged to take steps to ensure employees hearing health is not damaged by exposure to excessive noise… read more
• The Control of Noise at Work Act 2005 sets out when hearing protection should be made available to employees and 7.4 requires that “Any personal hearing protectors …… shall be selected by the employer so as to eliminate the risk to hearing or to reduce the risk to as low a level as is reasonably practicable”… read more

On the face of it all very straightforward. Exposure to excessive noise is far more damaging than most people realise so helping them to manage the risk is legally and morally the right thing to do.

Except it’s not straightforward at all. HSE reported back in 2009 that real life performance often wasn’t as good as specified performance and where Decibels are concerned apparently minor variations have major ramifications… read more

Over protecting can be just as dangerous as under protecting (workers have been killed because of not hearing warning signs) and claims for compensation for Noise Induced Hearing Loss are now commonplace. 

Making the ear plug test available to your employees as part of your employers hearing conservation program will:

• massively improve your Company safety compliance
• vastly improve your employee’s health and safety 
• substantially mitigate your risk of future compensation claims.

It will also enable you to:

• independently verify and monitor the quality of your workforce’s current protection
• provide the evidence to seek rectification of defective product (if appropriate)
• set up an evidence-based replacement policy
• help employees to get the best from their hearing protection via training

and crucially, prove you have taken steps to provide appropriate protective equipment as per (read more) and in accordance with your obligation to “ reduce the risk to as low a level as is reasonably practicable”… read more

Large employers can have an ear plug test specifically configured for them that contains only the protection products they use with access to the client records provided to a nominated person within the organisation together with the ability to download CSV files to collate statistical data. If there was a requirement to integrate with an existing health management system then we could support that through the use of API’s.