• No. There is no legal requirement for continual monitoring and recording of vibration exposure. To do
  so is probably not a good use of your or your employees’ time, unless there are very specific
  circumstances (see below).
  What you must do is decide what workers’ exposure is likely to be, as part of a vibration risk
  assessment. So a period of monitoring to understand how long workers use particular tools in a
  typical day or week may be necessary – if it helps you to do your risk assessment. Once you know
  enough about the work to say what the exposure is likely to be (and whether it is likely to exceed
  either the Exposure Action or Exposure Limit Value) your focus can shift to investigating, and taking,
  practical steps to reduce the exposure and the risks.

It’s likely that you can put your monitoring data to some use. It may give you enough information to
decide what individuals or groups of workers are at risk from vibration, either routinely or on an
intermittent basis. Please refer to webpage www.hse.gov.uk/vibration for guidance. Take positive
action to reduce the exposure and the risks – eg change the work process to avoid the need to use
hand tools, modify the work to improve ergonomics, change to better tools with lower vibration and
good ergonomic design, maintain and look after the tools and consumables and train your workers.
Make sure the action you take results in real changes – monitor your systems and make sure work
instructions are being followed. Don’t forget health surveillance for workers at risk, to pick up early
signs of ill-health.

Just because your workers’ exposure is below the Limit, it doesn’t mean you have complied with the
law, or done enough to protect workers’ health. A fundamental requirement under the regulations is
that exposure is reduced to ‘as low as reasonably practicable’.
If your workers’ exposure is regularly reaching the Exposure Limit Value, then you should be looking
at doing the work in a different way. Restricting exposure to just below the Exposure Limit Value will
still result in many workers developing hand-arm vibration syndrome (HAVS).

If there are particular workers who, following medical advice, have restrictions placed on their
vibration exposure, then it would be sensible to have a system in place to make sure that that
restricted level was not being exceeded, although this does not have to be through on-going
monitoring. Another example might be for emergency work involving vibration exposure.

Your insurance company should be able to tell you why it expects you to make and keep these
records. As noted above, there is no legal requirement on continual monitoring, and HSE does not
advise it on a routine basis. Your insurance company will rightly be concerned about its liability should
your workers develop ill-health; you can identify your steps taken to minimise risks and prevent illhealth by means of your risk assessment and evidence of the practical actions you are taking.