How I Use the Health and Safety Responsibility Chart Template with Customers in Pilla
A health and safety management system without clear ownership is just a filing cabinet. I've walked into businesses where every policy is in place, the risk assessments are up to date, and the training matrix is filled in. But when I ask who's responsible for checking the fire extinguishers or reviewing the COSHH assessments, nobody knows. The paperwork exists. The accountability doesn't.
That's what a responsibility chart fixes. It takes every safety arrangement in your business and ties it to a named role, so there's no ambiguity about who does what. I'll walk you through what needs to be on it, how I set it up as a knowledge hub entry in Pilla, and the mistakes I see most often when businesses try to do this themselves.
Key Takeaways
- What is a responsibility chart in health and safety? A responsibility chart assigns specific safety duties to named roles in your business, covering everything from first aid and accident reporting to fire safety, manual handling, and working at height. It's how you show that someone is accountable for each area of your health and safety management system
- Why do you need a responsibility chart? The Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974 places a general duty on employers to ensure the health and safety of employees, and the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 require you to have effective arrangements for planning, organising, and monitoring safety. A responsibility chart is the simplest way to prove those arrangements exist
- How do you set it up in Pilla? Use the knowledge hub template below, edit it to match your operation, and share it with your team through the app so everyone has access and you can track who's read it
- How do you automate the follow-up? Set up Poppi to chase staff who haven't acknowledged the policy and flag when it's due for review
Article Content
Understanding What's Required of You
The Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974 places a general duty on employers to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, the health, safety, and welfare of their employees. Section 2(3) requires employers with five or more employees to have a written health and safety policy, and part of that policy is setting out the organisation and arrangements for carrying it out. In plain terms: you need to show who is responsible for what.
The Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 go further. Regulation 5 requires employers to have effective arrangements for planning, organising, controlling, monitoring, and reviewing their health and safety measures. A responsibility chart is how most businesses meet this requirement. It's the single document that maps every safety arrangement to a named role.
I've reviewed health and safety management systems in hundreds of businesses, and the responsibility chart is one of the first things I look at. If it's missing or vague, it usually means nobody is actively managing those areas. The policies exist on paper, but the day-to-day ownership has fallen through the gaps. An HSE inspector will pick up on the same thing. They want to see that you haven't just written a policy statement, but that you've actually assigned the work to real people.
The chart should cover every safety arrangement that applies to your operation. That includes first aid, accident reporting, training, fire safety, work equipment, PPE, COSHH, manual handling, electrical safety, and everything else that sits in your management system. If you have 30 safety arrangements, you need 30 lines on the chart, each with a responsible role against it.
One thing I push with every business I work with: assign duties to job roles, not to individuals by name. A "General Manager" or "Head Chef" stays consistent even when the person in that role changes. If you write "Sarah" and Sarah leaves, the chart is out of date the day she hands in her notice. Roles are more durable than names.
Setting It Up as a Knowledge Hub Entry
I've built a responsibility chart template in Pilla that lists every safety arrangement you'd typically need to cover, with a column for the responsible person against each one. It gives you a structured starting point, but you should edit it to match the safety arrangements that actually apply to your business.
In the knowledge hub, create a new entry and tag it with "Health and Safety System". Use the same tag across all of your health and safety policies so they are grouped together and Poppi can track them as a set. Assign the entry to all teams so that everyone in the business can access it.
The template is designed to be edited, not just filed. Go through each safety arrangement on the list. If it applies to your business, assign a job role. If it doesn't apply, remove it. A small office-based business won't need lines for gas safety or working at height. A construction firm will need all of them and possibly more. The point is that the chart reflects your operation, not a generic list.
House Responsibility Chart
This House Responsibility Chart shows the distribution of responsibility for specified health and safety issues to named personnel or senior job roles.
Key
General Manager – GM
Assistant Manager - AM
This is a preview of the template. In Pilla, you can edit this to match your business.
What I'd want to see when reviewing this:
The chart needs to cover every safety arrangement in your management system. I'd check it against your policy list. If you have a lone working policy, there should be a line for lone working on the chart. If you have a COSHH assessment, someone should be named as responsible for chemicals. There shouldn't be gaps between what your policies say and who owns them.
I'd also want to see that the responsible roles make sense. First aid responsibilities should sit with someone who's actually first-aid trained. Fire safety should sit with someone senior enough to make decisions during an evacuation. COSHH should be managed by someone who understands the substances being used. Assigning everything to one person is a red flag. It usually means nobody is really doing it all.
Common mistakes I see:
The most common mistake is assigning every single safety arrangement to the same person, usually the general manager or owner. On paper it looks like everything is covered. In practice, one person cannot actively manage 30 different safety areas. Spread the responsibilities across your management team based on their competence and the areas they actually oversee.
The second mistake is using people's names instead of job roles. I've seen charts that list "Dave" against 15 safety arrangements. Dave left six months ago. Nobody updated the chart, and nobody picked up his duties. Use the role title, and update it when the organisational structure changes.
I also see businesses listing safety arrangements that don't apply to them, without removing them or marking them as not applicable. If you don't have lifting equipment, don't leave the lifting equipment line blank with no responsible person. Either remove it or note that it doesn't apply. A blank line with no name against it looks like an oversight, not a deliberate decision.
Automate the Follow-Up with Poppi
Writing the policy is one thing. Making sure your team has actually read it is another. Poppi can handle the chasing so you don't have to.
If you mark the knowledge hub entry as mandatory, Poppi will track who's read it and who hasn't. You can set up automations to chase staff who are behind, notify managers when someone completes the policy, and get a regular report showing where the gaps are.
Here are three automations I'd set up for any knowledge hub policy:
Tom, you have 2 overdue policies to read and acknowledge
Overdue training reminders
Automatically chase team members who have mandatory policies they haven't read yet. Poppi sends the reminder so you don't have to.
Tom, you have 2 overdue policies to read and acknowledge
Emma has completed a mandatory policy
Video completion alerts
Get notified when a team member finishes reading or watching a policy, so you can track progress without chasing.
Emma has completed a mandatory policy
Training Report: 87% team completion. Tom and Sarah behind on 2 mandatory policies, due 3 days ago.
Training gap analysis
Get a regular AI report showing which team members are behind on mandatory policies and where the gaps are across your team.
Training Report: 87% team completion. Tom and Sarah behind on 2 mandatory policies, due 3 days ago.