Organisations are largely positive about their health and safety capabilities but it’s important that a culture of complacency does not creep in and that issues such as mental health get the attention they deserve.
The 2024 Health & Safety Report, produced by RS in association with Health and Safety Magazine, suggests most organisations are confident that they are getting the basics right. Almost nine in 10 who responded to the survey feel they have a high or extremely high capability around protecting employees (88%) and end-users (89%). And 80 per cent rate their systems, reporting, leadership and governance for Environment, Health and Safety at this level.
Ryan Plummer, Senior Director at RS Safety Solutions, believes this is reassuring. “If you’re 100 per cent confident, then complacency can set in, and that doesn’t take into account issues such as staff turnover or new equipment which means you have to change processes or the type of PPE that you use,” he says. “It’s clear that, for most organisations, there’s a high level of compliance and that it’s a topic that is taken seriously.”
The risk of complacency, though, is always present. John Barnacle-Bowd, Vice President Environment, Health & Safety at RS Group, gives the example of sites which have signs up specifying how many days have elapsed since the last accident. “That can lead to complacency because people think they’re safe,” he says. “But you also get that peer pressure where, if there is an accident, people may not report it because they don’t want to ruin that number on the board.”
His advice is for organisations to bring in people from outside who can provide a fresh perspective on any health and safety issues. “You have to be completely honest with yourself,” he says. “We’re starting an audit process for our distribution centres, and I’m not having people audit their own work. We had an audit in Corby last month and I brought an employee who does safety in EMEA over from Germany to do the audit. It’s a new person with a fresh set of eyes. Everyone who does safety has different skill sets and will see different things from their own experience. That can help to break any complacency.”
Company culture
Confidence falls slightly when it comes to how highly organisations rate the wider safety culture within their business, where 76 per cent rank it high or extremely high, with 24 per cent less positive. Steven Harris, Managing Director of Integrity HSE, points out this is notoriously difficult to assess. “The term ‘culture’ contains several factors which are very difficult to measure individually, such as values, attitudes and perceptions, but when they are combined to create a collective workforce behaviour, it takes on a whole new level of complexity,” he says.
For organisations that feel they need to do more to enhance the wider organisational attitude to health and safety, the starting point is education about just what a safety culture means. “This would be followed by working with the workforce to improve the aspects of it that lead to the most amount of, or most serious, unplanned events,” he adds.
In some organisations, there can be misconceptions that lull people into a false sense of security. “In terms of major accident-hazard industries, you have two distinct types of safety: personal and process,” says Harris. “Often things look safe because everyone is wearing PPE but the risks that result from failing processes, such as maintenance management system backlogs, are not recognised because they are not immediately visible.”
Medium-sized organisations are most positive about their health and safety capabilities, with 85 per cent of businesses with between 50 and 250 employees expressing confidence in this area. This compares to 80 per cent of small firms and 78 per cent of larger organisations, suggesting there may be a challenge for businesses to maintain levels of competence as they evolve.
