We all are guilty of doing the easy bits first and putting off the hard more difficult things until tomorrow, next week or even further down our to-do pile.
But when it comes to the health of your workers and the safety of your workplace, this level of procrastination can be very serious.
Businesses always have to find the time when dealing with a failure, breach or litigious claim – but wouldn’t it be wiser to spend time developing proactive and constructive improvements to prevent these from happening in the first place?
Easier said than done, right? So why do we put these things off?
Conventional wisdom tells us that health and safety is complicated, difficult, and in some businesses not even needed (that last bit is completely wrong).
It’s a quirk of human behaviour that we will always pick a less-intensive task first over a complicated time-consuming task. We’re all guilty of it at one time or another. We’d rather choose the smaller tasks which use less mental or physical commitment, against the larger more arduous tasks that requires more effort.
In some way, this selection makes us feel we have achieved more, we can cross more off the list, our to-do list is now shorter.
But the larger, harder tasks are still there – waiting. And when new smaller jobs get added to the list again, the more difficult tasks never get done.
Facing your difficult tasks first
There is a great book called ‘Eat That Frog’ by Brian Tracy. The book encourages you to do your difficult tasks first, because the longer it’s on your plate, the harder it will become to do the thing you’re dreading.
The problem grows, making it less appetising to tackle and with relevance to health and safety, a potentially dangerous decision.
And it’s one of the biggest problems we see when helping clients. It doesn’t matter if they’re looking to to Safety PAL to simply improve safety, implement management tools or better manage worker wellbeing. Just getting started is the hardest obstacle we help them overcome.
Even the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) have admitted they have also jumped on the easy bit’s
“We’ve jumped on the easy bits; we’ve done some of the wellbeing stuff and put in place mental health first aiders. But I’m not sure [this] is the same as we do with all the other issues in terms of the hierarchy of control: prevention, reduction and then control.”
From the HSE press release pages, you will see on average of 25-30 companies a month prosecuted for failing to comply with health and safety legislation. When investigated, a company’s H&S management system is also taken into account; how their health and safety is delivered, and whether workers are actually following company policies and procedures.
You don’t need more paperwork
We should all understand that health and safety is hugely important, irrespective of the challenges, how convoluted it can be, and how it’s sometimes perceived. It’s not only important, it’s also the law.
In order to better prevent harm and mitigate risk, you don’t need more forms, paperwork, or Safety Schemes. You need simpler, easier tools which make safety simpler, easier and more measurable. Breaking health & safety down in smaller, easier more manageable tasks.
Safety PAL is dedicated to maximising business productivity by simplifying every element of your Health and Safety.
By using and improving the documents you already have, it easily distributes these to your workforce – and turns a task that’s been sat on your to-do list for a while into a challenge completed.
Safety PAL subscribers can be assured all their workforce have full access 24/7 365 to all essential help, advice, documents and videos to reduce risk and improve production. It gives all workers access to one common platform and helps grow a positive safety culture.
Simply put, Safety PAL gets things done.
Cross things off your to-do list
If you struggle with getting health & safety tasks accomplished, give us a call on 01636 858245 or email us at safety@yoursafetypal.com. Chances are you’re already doing a lot of what you need to, we can just help you get it done faster and more efficiently – and help you be able to prove you’ve done everything you need to.
Take a minute to look at a few of the companies prosecuted in May 2019, to see if any of their failures are hanging around on your list of things to do.
Useful links
- Nobody has ever argued Health and Safety isn’t important https://yoursafetypal.com/weighing-up-health-and-safety/
- HSE failing to make progress on work-related stress, IOSH public sector conference told https://www.ioshmagazine.com/article/hse-failing-to-make-progress-on-work-related-stress-iosh-public-sector-conference-told
- Health and Safety Executive Press release pages https://press.hse.gov.uk/?_ga=2.134471729.1367864752.1561377837-1108393337.1528704717
- Safety PAL In-courts roundup in May 2019 https://yoursafetypal.com/court_cases/court-cases-in-may-2019/
Don't take our word for it,
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Keeps Employees Safe
By providing training, managing and feedback systems that can be evidenced in 27 languages.
Reduces Risk of Accidents
Provides proof, to reduce your exposure to prosecution.
Provides Real-Time Reporting 24/7
Showing what has been completed, and what important tasks need to be done next.