Statistics show how we are falling below the required standards

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) – the UK government agency responsible for the encouragement, regulation and enforcement of workplace health, safety and welfare in Great Britain, has just released the annual work-related fatality figures for 2019/20.

One hundred eleven (111) workers were fatally injured while at work between April 2019 and March 2020; this is the lowest year on record.

The statistics also detail an estimated 581,000 workers sustained non-fatal injuries in the period of 2018/19, according to self-reports.

The HSE does not report on Employer Liability or Public Liability compensation claims. It’s not unreasonable to assume the injured person (IP) during an incident or accident investigation contacts a conditional fee solicitor to submit an injury claim.

Albeit this period is the lowest work-related deaths on record, no worker should be injured or killed while at work, and no family deserves to deal with a workplace accident.

There is also the catastrophic impact a work-related injury or death has on the business.

Good health and safety performance

Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 is an Act to make further provision for securing the health, safety and welfare of persons at work, for protecting others against risks to health or safety in connection with the activities of persons at work.

The act makes multiple references to the employers’ obligation to ensure so far as is reasonably practicable, the health, safety and welfare at work of all employees and non-employees who are thereby exposed to risk.

It should be clear the recent statistics show there is a severe disconnection between what legislation requires organisations and employers to do, against what organisation and employers are doing.

As if employers and employees followed the directives, then statistics would be considerably lower.

The Leading Health and Safety at work Publication INDG417 (rev1) highlight three essential principals to underpin good health and safety performance:

1, Strong and active leadership from the top

2, Worker involvement

3, Assessment and review

The elephant in the room

How do businesses bridge the gap between what they should be doing (meeting the required health and safety standards) and what they are doing?

How do companies and individual directors prove workers are working safely, and how do they implement suitable and sufficient training along with processes and systems reducing the risk to as low as reasonably practicable?

The obvious answer is to consult with your employees, implement resource, polices, procedures, robust systems and regular checks, achieving a balance between your systems and behavioural aspects of your team.
But all this comes at a cost and while every company director found dealing with breach of health and safety standards, would quickly answer an Enforcement Officer “We never cut cost when it comes to the safety and health of our workforce” money is a factor in delivering workplace health and safety as legislation requires.

Although money is a determinant for every business, cost-cutting at the expense of safety is something which is an aggravating factor and would increase the seriousness when dealing with a health and safety offence.

So how can we achieve both? Efficient and robust health and safety management with the capability to prove the body corporate and individual directors have done so far as is ‘reasonably practicable’?

Practical Solution

One practical solution would be to provide the business leaders with the evidence and proof of compliance via safety checkpoints.

Establish communication systems to share vital information to the entire workforce based on their discipline and competence.

Better engagement with the workforce, utilise technology and report on good working practices.

Be more proactive with regular health assessments, interactive training and allow upward communication.

Increase monitoring, reporting and reviews to determine essential health and safety principals.

Correlate decisions, actions and control measures against health and safety legislation at all times to protect the body corporate and individual director from a legal or civil claim.

Furthermore, businesses need to do all this without increasing resource or escalating costs!

It is possible

By reading the practical solutions above, you have now read the foundation of Safety PAL (PLAN ACT LEARN) and the positive results emerging from uniting your organisation in one single-source solution.

Safety PALs most significant advantage is to consolidate and connect various modules into a single-source efficient and effective solution:

• Effective communication
• Training on demand
• Job Management
• Employees behaviour
• Fatigue Management
• Incident reporting
• Human Resource
• Cloud-based
• Supply chain management
• Limiting business risk

Do you need proof? 

To get a more dynamic view of how Safety PAL successfully integrates, we have put together a ‘Day in the life of Safety PAL’ video.

Once you have watched the video, feel free to get in touch, ask questions or even request a personalised product tour.

Links and resource data

HSE releases annual workplace fatality figures for 2019/20  https://press.hse.gov.uk/2020/07/01/hse-releases-annual-workplace-fatality-figures-for-2019-20/

Health and Safety Executive INDG417(rev1) leaflet https://www.hse.gov.uk/pubns/indg417.pdf

Health and Safety Executive HSG65 publication https://www.hse.gov.uk/pubns/priced/hsg65.pdf

Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 Section 2 http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1974/37/section/2

Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 Section 3 http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1974/37/section/3

Health and Safety Executive HSE40(rev4) Employers’ Liability (Compulsory Insurance) Act 1969 leaflet https://www.hse.gov.uk/pubns/hse40.pdf

The Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/1999/3242/contents/made