“If you think health and safety is expensive, try an accident” is a quotation attributed to Stelios Haji-Ioannou, the entrepreneur famous for starting the series of ventures under the “Easy” brand.
His management experience started when he was in his early 20’s, working in his father’s shipping company. In 1991, there was an explosion and subsequent fire on an ageing, family owned oil tanker in the Mediterranean, resulting in the death of five crewmen.
Stelios readily admits that the day of the accident was the worst day of his life. Nonetheless, the experience was character forming, and taught him a lot about safety. As a result, he has taken health and safety very seriously in all of his subsequent business ventures.
This is not unusual. The “it’ll never happen to me” attitude is prevalent in organisations, both large and small. Many reckon that just because they haven’t had an accident, they must be getting it right. Many only realise that’s not necessarily the case, however, until something goes wrong and someone gets injured.
HSE figures confirm that in 2014/15 in the UK, 144 people were killed at work, and 1.2 million people were suffering from a work-related illness. Workplace injuries and ill health is anticipated to cost society an estimated £14.3 billion every year.
Many organisations still see safety as a burden on business. It might be seen as something which is too complicated, or perhaps too cumbersome or onerous. Perhaps even too expensive. If you think health and safety is expensive, try an accident.
Some organisations believe, erroneously, that the total cost of an accident is covered by their EL/PL insurance. Studies by the UK’s health and safety regulator, the Health and Safety Executive, show that for every £1 that an organisation receives as part of a liability claim, as much as £36 has to be borne by the organisation in non-insured costs. These can include fines, investigation time, re-appraisal of existing systems, improving controls, lost orders and bad publicity. It can take years to build the reputation of a business, however that reputation can be destroyed overnight.
Legally, organisations are required to take reasonable care to ensure the safety of employees and others. It’s not rocket science. Businesses have to make sure that the precautions they take are reasonable. So, what does reasonable mean? It’s a balancing act between the level of risk, and the cost involved to mitigate that risk. It’s all a matter of proportion. What is needed in a small office is completely different to what is needed in a nuclear power station. That’s reasonable.
A good place to start when being able to prove reasonableness to an insurance surveyor, underwriter, auditor, HSE Inspector or anyone else, would be to be demonstrate that the organisation has an effective system in place to manage safety. Health and safety management shouldn’t be any different to the principles of any other type of management in an organisation, whether that be human resources, production, maintenance, finance, or anything else. It’s all a matter of proportion.
This is a message that the Health and Safety Executive is keen to advocate. “If you think health and safety has to be complicated – it doesn’t”.
They have a simple guidance document, “Successful Health and Safety Management”. This follows the PDCA approach, “Plan, Do, Check, Act”, which can be applied to the management of any function within a business.
Plan; Set your policy, and plan for implementation. What do you want to achieve? What resources will be needed? How is this communicated to employees?
Do; Assess risks, develop and implement appropriate controls, and record them. Organise and involve employees.
Check; Measure how you are performing. Are you doing what you said you’d do? Carry out checks, analyse accidents and near misses.
Act; Review performance. Learn from your lessons, and continually improve.
The “keeping it simple” mantra is also one that is also preached at Braeside Safety Ltd, which offers health, safety and environmental training and consultancy services to organisations, large and small.
Braeside Safety likes to keep it simple. Health and safety training, whether it be a NEBOSH course or a bespoke training seminar, works better when people feel engaged and really enjoy the experience. It’s about breaking down barriers, debunking myths and making the training relevant and interesting. Similarly, health and safety consultancy isn’t about blinding people with science. It’s about helping people to get things right.
The Health and Safety Executive and Braeside Safety both agree. If you think health and safety has to be complicated – it doesn’t.