The Case for Safety

Originally published in ‘Foundry Trade Journal’ Volume 184, No. 3676, July / August 2010
The United Kingdom has led the way on legislating to provide safe and healthy workplaces since 1802, when the world’s first workplace health and safety law was enacted to protect young people in textile mills. Unbelievably, workplace safety laws pre-date legislation to prohibit slavery; the British Slave Trade Act was passed in 1807 and the Slavery Abolition Act 1833 made the slave trade illegal throughout the British Empire.
A reminder of the dark satanic mills of George III’s Britain and an Empire trafficking humans for profit remind of the progress we’ve made in a couple of hundred years, but many people still think we have some way to go. In the coming weeks, Health and Safety Executive (HSE) will likely report that for the year to April 2010, UK workplaces sustained the lowest number of fatalities ever recorded¹, but this ‘low’ figure still comprises about a car-load of people every week. And the UK, along with Sweden, is often regarded as the safest country in the world in which to work…
Our journey towards continual improvements in workplace health and safety has been characterized, particularly in recent years by:

• Increased legislation and mandated requirements
• The rise of a compensation culture
• Some trivializing of ‘elf and safety by the media, as myths and poor practice are publicized
• The development of structured means of control and management systems

Increased Legislation
Qualified majority voting at European level has tended to increase worker protection laws in the last twenty years. Few business managers welcome increased ‘red tape’ of any variety, whether employment laws, tax laws, or safety laws. However, experience from the world’s workplaces suggests that there is a significant and measurable impact of principal health and safety legislation.
You can research your own countries experiences later, but recent data from the UK and the USA presented here show the magnitude of the ‘improvement’ in tables 1 and 2 below.
Health and Safety at Work Act 1974

	Year of inception	2007
Fatalities	651	229
Fatality rate / 100,000 workers	2.9	0.8

Table 1 – Impact of principal health and safety legislation in the UK
Occupational Safety and Health Act 1970

	Year of inception	2007
Fatalities	13,800	5657
Fatality rate / 100,000 workers	18.0	3.8

Table 2 – Impact of principal health and safety legislation in the USA
Compensation Culture
It seems that every radio commercial, every newspaper and every hospital waiting room is smothered with advertisements from lawyers touting their trade; “If there’s blame, there’s a claim” is the genus of what most of us have seen.
What is certainly true is that the injured employee (‘the claimant’) has to show that the employer has either:

• Broken a health and safety law enacted to protect them, or
• Been negligent, to the extent where a civil court judge feels it more likely than not that the employer could have taken further reasonable actions to prevent the injury

Certainly, we seem to be a more litigious society in recent years. Lord Young, appointed to conduct a review of health and safety in the UK and reporting directly to the Prime Minister, spoke on BBC breakfast news on 14 June 2010 to signal an intention for change saying that "The [British] health service paid out £8bn in five years; only one third went to the claimants, and two thirds went to all those other parties. Now that is really something that should be stopped". David Cameron, Prime Minister, writing in The Times the same day said that Lord Young would “investigate concerns over the application and perception of health and safety legislation, together with the rise of the compensation culture over the last decade”.
"What actually happens is they investigate your claim, decide you have a good one, they then auction it to the lawyer who will pay the most for it".
"So you don't get the best lawyer, you get the person who pays the most, therefore probably scrimps the most to win."
"The [British] health service paid out £8bn in five years - only one third went to the claimants, and two thirds went to all those other parties. Now that is really something that should be stopped."
"Money in the health service should be spent on health, not on these things."
- Lord Young, appointed to conduct a review of health and safety in the UK, 14 June 2010
‘Elf & Safety
Most people have heard about the restaurant that banned tooth picks because of ‘elf and safety. Or the pancake race ‘banned’ in case people tripped. Or the ladder which ‘negligently’ failed to display a ‘stop’ sign on the top rung. Even HSE has set up a website to answer some of these absurdities².
What seems clear is that there are high hazard industries, including foundries, where sensible attention to improve health and safety saves lives and prevents injuries. The challenge for businesses is to know just what is significant…
The Institution of Occupational Safety and Health is the world’s largest membership body for health and safety practitioners with over 37,000 members – including over 14,000 Chartered Health and Safety Practitioners. These can be recognised by the post-nominal letters ‘CMIOSH’ or ‘CFIOSH’. Chartered Members and Fellows of IOSH hold recognised qualifications, and undertake mandatory continuing professional development (CPD) to remain up to date. To retain anyone else to advise your organisation for advice is to risk ‘silly safety’.
Health and Safety Management Systems
Some people think the origins of modern management systems lie with the thoughts and writings of W. Edwards Deming (1900-1993). His popular ‘Plan-Do-Check-Act’ model for continual improvement has slipped into common language, and remains popular in boardrooms.
Published in 1991, and comprehensively revised in 1997, HSE published its seminal publication ‘Successful Health and Safety Management’; commonly known by its catalogue number HSG65. Building on the Deming Wheel (see Figure 1), the model shows how in six steps, any organisation can be successful in workplace health and safety:

• Policy – A clearly expressed document providing direction and a commitment to high standards endorsed by top management
• Organising – An effective management structure with arrangements for delivering the policy, empowered motivated staff, and a positive culture
• Planning and Implementing – Use of risk assessment to identify the priorities and set objectives for improvements
• Measuring performance – Checking as you go provides real-time indicators of progress, and identifies where improvement is needed
• Audit – An independent and systematic appraisal to provide assurance that the systems are working as intended, and providing an alert when they are not³.
• Reviewing performance – Periodic review by top management to ensure the organisation learns from its experiences and applies the lessons

A possible alternative to Plan-Do-Check- Act is ‘React-React-React-React’. This react and remedy approach may seem easier and cheaper than the former, but, as many organisations have found to their cost; over the longer term “predict and prevent” is not only better, but also the lower cost.
Your Prescription for Health and Safety Improvement
1. Convince yourself that incidents and injuries are not inevitable; that with your involvement as a catalyst, your organisation too can be ‘great’ at health and safety. And don’t stop if you’re already doing well – this is a journey, not a destination.
2. Retain the services of a Chartered Member (or a Chartered Fellow) of IOSH. You’ll probably use the services of a Chartered accountant for your books; and a Dentist for your teeth. So a properly qualified and up-to-date safety practitioner is the logical source of advice to help you to focus on the health and safety priorities.
3. Take an hour to read HSG65 (£12.50 from all good book sellers), and make sure that the approach in your enterprise is aligned. When the regulator has provided consistent guidance for almost twenty years, why would you consider anything less?
4. Seek an independent Health and Safety Auditor to review your current performance. Only when you know where your performance may be impaired may you re-focus your endeavours. Health and safety is no accident…
The Programme Paid for Itself…
Stephen Asbury was appointed health and safety manager for an international engineering group with 60,000 employees operating in over thirty countries in 1991; as a part of this responsibility, inheriting a foundry in Yorkshire where standards had fallen to rather low levels.
“Visiting this hell-hole for the first time”, Stephen says, “I had men rolling their sleeves up to show me horrific burns which they wore as a badge of honour”. Stephen continues “Management thought that injuries were inevitable, that training was a luxury, and had seemingly done little or nothing to change the working conditions in many years”.
Working with his (extremely proactive) Chief Executive, Stephen and his team were able to turn the site’s health and safety performance around, and the result four years later was the presentation of a RoSPA Health and Safety Gold Award in 1995.
Stephen summarises the programme - “All it took was sustained leadership, a clear plan, and a determined implementation. Our workers were worth the investment of our time, and the programme paid for itself over five years”.
About the Author:
Stephen Asbury is a Chartered Fellow of IOSH, and Chair of the IOSH Professional Committee. Professionally, he is the Managing Director of Corporate Risk Systems Limited, and Author of the best-selling book ‘Health & Safety, Environment and Quality Audits – A Risk-based Approach’ and over 30 other books and articles.

1 http://www.hse.gov.uk/foi/fatalities/2009-10.htm provides a list of their names and occupations.

2 http://www.hse.gov.uk/myth/index.htm

3 From ‘HSEQ Audits – A Risk Based Approach’ by Asbury & Ashwell ISBN 978-0-7506-80264