Safeguarding Consultancy

for employers, employees, and apprentices

Safeguarding Governance for the commercial workplace

For organisations and commercial businesses implementing:

Wellbeing and Mental Health First Aid style initiatives.
Strategies to protect people from discrimination and bullying.
An overall "safer people strategy" to help keep. apprentices and colleagues safe in their workplace.
Legal and best practice compliance.
An employer's duty of care and provides governance regarding what to do in a safeguarding crisis, if a colleague is at risk of suicide, and how to protect people from abuse and exploitation.

Ensuring legal and best practice guidance to understand what issues and risks employees and apprentices may face and how they can access support.

It can be complicated to consider next steps when legal obligations are not fully explicit and people do not know what to do in the best interests of the people within the company or organisation. Priorities and worries then factor in when thinking about how far a company should go to protect a colleague and what is proportionate or a legal requirement. A big part of this is to create a culture of openness and wellbeing.

It is an employer's duty of care to have the correct guidance in place to support employees and managers in being able to support one-another. You do not have to employ a safeguarding expert but ensure that the right procedures exist and that people are appropriately trained in how to deal with scenarios of concern.

When we consider children and young people particularly young apprentices, it feels like the rules and guidelines appear pretty simple. Of course, there are many different concerns and risks that require a tailored response but ordinarily people will be able to access support or create a referral so that the right people can assess the issue.

Organisations that are embedding psychological safety, wellbeing, and mental health initiatives including mental health first aid interventions must really consider safeguarding governance, particularly for those at risk of suicide. Without this governance in place, it can lead to enormous risks. Some of these risks are of course surrounding severe mental health conditions worsening, people in the business not being supported when they support others, colleagues in positions not being supported or governed effectively, inadequate training and support, and of course reputational damage.

Organisations that adopt a mental health and wellbeing strategy that includes support from Employee Assistance Programmes can support people with a whole range of things such as financial and debt advice, GP access, counselling, and fitness support. However, it is the organisations that understand the bigger risks that present that really succeed, they invest in longer term mental health culture programmes, they invest in robust and tailored safeguarding policies and frameworks to ensure people and employees are safeguarded and finally they invest in awareness training to reinforce the knowledge and skills.

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Our Approach

RLB can support your organisation using a three phased approach to understand the current policies, procedures, and initiatives that support employee wellbeing and then bring this into operational and strategic safe practices.

Our approach includes:

Phase 1- Creating a bespoke policy and procedure and governance structure that underpins employee wellbeing, safeguarding, and the risk of suicide or crisis.

Phase 2- To deliver bespoke awareness training at different levels throughout the organisation to promote understanding of safeguarding, support, and crisis management.

Phase 3- To ensure that the safeguarding strategy is effective and to identify any further opportunities to embed and promote wellbeing and safety for all.