Health and safety law posters in the workplace

Employers are required, by law, to either display the HSE-approved law poster or to provide each of their workers with the equivalent leaflet.

If an employer chooses to use the Health and Safety Law poster to communicate with their employees they should consider the location and quantity that they display.

Health and Safety Law posters must be displayed in a prominent location on all business sites in an area that can be accessed by all employees. If there is not one central area that all employees use and have access to, then employers should consider placing posters in mutliple locations, ensuring they are visible to all employees. This could be in a number of communal areas including staff rooms, kitchens, reception areas and office spaces.

A company may also have different distinct areas of work that require their own posters, for example a company that has offices and a warehouse may want to display the Health and Safety Law Poster in each of these to ensure that all staff have clear site of the information. If a company has more than one building on a site then there should be Health and Safety Law posters in each building. When there are multiple employers in one workplace it is each employer’s responsibility to display the Health and Safety Law Poster in their work space for their individual employees.

The Health and Safety Law Poster is design to provide health and safety information in an informative and accessible style to encourage all employees to read and understand the content. In 2009, the HSE introduced an updated, simpler version of the Health & Safety Law Poster. In order to minimise the impact on organisations, the HSE provided a five year transition period meaning that employers had until 5th April 2014 to replace the poster or leaflets with the new version. This means that you should be displaying the updated version of the poster.

If you need to purchase Health and Safety Law posters, we have the main UK version, the Northern Ireland version, and the UK poster in Welsh too.