A safety policy has three parts and they are routinely written as though they were one. The statement says what the organisation intends. The responsibilities say who does what. The arrangements say how each risk is actually handled. Almost every unusable safety policy is one where the arrangements were written at the same altitude as the statement, so the document expresses good intentions and tells nobody what to do on Monday.
The statement, which is short and signed
A paragraph, signed and dated by whoever is accountable, saying that the organisation is committed to providing a safe place to work and will provide the resources to do it. It is genuinely worth having and it is genuinely not worth more than a paragraph. Its job is to establish that somebody senior owns this, and a signature does that better than three pages of prose.
Responsibilities, named by role
Who is responsible for risk assessments, for equipment checks, for training records, for reporting an incident and for acting on one. Name roles rather than people so the document survives somebody leaving, but be specific enough that every task has exactly one owner. Shared responsibility for a safety task is the arrangement under which it is nobody's.
Arrangements, which are the specific part
One section per real hazard in your actual workplace, saying what is done about it. This is where a template is least useful, because the hazards of a workshop, an office and a warehouse have almost nothing in common, and a policy listing hazards you do not have while omitting the one you do is worse than none: it reads as compliance theatre to the people who face the real hazard daily.
The record, and why it is the part inspectors ask for
Training given, incidents reported, checks completed, and who has read the current version of the policy. The document is the easy half. The record of it being lived is what somebody asks for, and reconstructing it after the fact is both painful and unconvincing.
Questions people ask about safety policy
Does a small employer need a written safety policy?
Requirements vary by state, industry and headcount, so check what applies to you. Independently of that, if anybody operates equipment, writing it down is the cheapest risk reduction available.
How specific do the arrangements have to be?
Specific enough that a new starter could read the section for their job and know what to do. If it reads like it could apply to any company, it is not written yet.
Who signs it?
The most senior person who can commit the resources it promises. A safety statement signed by somebody who cannot authorise spending is a statement of hope.