A health and safety manual is designed to provide information to employees about health and safety precautions, regulations, and policies. Such manuals are frequently required for a number of reasons related to legal or contractual obligations, including but not limited to needing it to obtain insurance coverage, satisfy a contractor, satisfy government regulations at the local, state/provincial, or federal levels, support requests for compensation or aid, support a bid, pass an inspection, or as documentation for an audit. Like any manual, a health and safety manual is designed both to be read and understood by employees and to provide documentation of warnings issued by the employer in the event of a lawsuit or other legal proceeding in which evidence of prior warning is important for adjudicating claims.

A health and safety manual typically consists of a number of "boilerplate" regulations, rules, and policies aimed at employee safety and wellbeing. In the United States, it is a legal requirement that employees be informed of health and safety risks. Most manuals feature the following topics, according to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration: Health and safety regulations, risk assessment forms and instructions, health and safety policies, requisite forms, codes of practice, employee guides, and hazard tables. In addition, individual businesses may tailor the manual to their particular workplace situation, since the particular health and safety hazards faced by an employee differ depending on the industry.