The confidence decline: Why health & safety needs a second wind

And although 80 per cent rate the wider attitude towards managing EHS in their organisation as high or very high, this has fallen from 84 per cent. Seven in 10 (72%) describe the overall safety culture in their business as high or very high, but this has slipped from 76 per cent a year before. 

Hugh Maxwell is Managing Director of Maxwell Safety. He says he’s already seeing the impact of tighter economic conditions and a prevailing attitude of caution. “We’re already seeing budget cuts and less reinvestment in terms of systems, training and mental health,” he says. “There doesn’t seem to be a longer-term, sustainable approach to create psychological safety, where welfare and wellbeing is as strong as it should be.” 

Steven Harris, Managing Director of Integrity HSE, says there are several risks that come with this. “The loss of production is huge,” he says. “From my experience, for every pound of direct insured cost as a result of an HSE incident, there’s eight to 32 times as much in uninsured costs.  

 “This would mean if you have a forklift truck incident in your plant, and it costs you £10,000 in direct cost, it’s going to cost you anything from £80,000 to a third of a million pounds to put things right. The uninsured costs come down to potentially replacing the person that was there, training a new person, the investigation, the loss of reputation and the increased insurance costs.” 

There are signs that cutting corners is starting to impact safety, as a health and safety consultant from the construction sector relayed: 

There are also concerns around mental health. Only just over half (53%) are confident they can help and protect staff in this area, down from 55 per cent the year before. John Barnacle-Bowd, Vice President, Health, Safety and Environment at RS Group, believes there is more that EHS professionals can do to help.  

In the workplace we’ve got historic first-aiders, so the people who come over and put a plaster on your wound, but we don’t necessarily have the same reflection in the amount of people that undertake mental health first aid training, so there’s a disparity there,” he says. 

  “There’s also an underlying issue that men don’t like to talk about mental health.” This is a particular issue in sectors such as construction; figures from the charity Mates in Mind suggest suicide rates among construction workers are 3.7 times higher than the national average.  

A greater focus on mental health can then lead to developing appropriate solutions. “Some people might just need somebody to interact with and talk to regularly,” says Maxwell. “It may be external factors, such as things at home or they may be new parents who are just coming back to work after maternity leave. 

 “There’s no one blueprint that fits at all. It’s about being a more caring employer and making that leap so mental wellbeing is seen as just as important as physical wellbeing.”