How bored are you of health and safety people shouting out about the accident triangle?
Telling you to focus on the small unsafe acts and near hits because they may lead to something more significant.
Challenging you to stop people carrying hot cups of tea, not using a ladder for a simple job.
Making stupid calls that stop you doing a decent job because they are treating you and your employees like idiots.
How do you feel about it? Is it a load of rubbish?
It is all too easy to get into the routine of getting loads of information on near misses and unsafe acts that actually were never going to seriously injury anyone. You can very quickly get bogged down with so much information that people don’t do anything with it, the people who put things in get frustrated because no one is looking at what they said. It’s a lose, lose situation, so stop it.
I say push back. I challenge you to start looking at the serious things that could go wrong in a business and could really hurt someone.
Why spend hours doing COSHH assessments for products that you have no intention of removing from the workplace and have little effect on people if handled sensibly.
After all who drinks bleach?? When did someone last get ill from putting an ink pen in their mouth??
However, if you have a substance that could really hurt someone as it’s a corrosive or toxic, can sensitise your lungs or can lead to cancer then do something about it.
So let’s talk straight here. I want you to consider STKY incidents (that’s pronounced sticky)
STUFF THAT KILLS YOU
I see loads of risk assessments that are really poor because someone has been told to produce assessments for all the jobs that are being undertaken. I have seen sites with over 100 risk assessments. Really…. Are you not losing sight of the wood for the trees.
My challenge to you is sit down with your team and pick five jobs that have a real potential to seriously injure or kill someone and do a bloody good job at getting them properly controlled. You are not going to eliminate the risk so control it.
Involve the people who do the jobs right at the start and put aside this ‘we are too busy’ nonsense.
Stop hiding behind 'we haven’t got time' and just get out and do it. And when you have sorted the five, pick five more, and when you can’t find five more go back to the first five.
What are your views? Do you agree?
If you need help establishing the direction you want to take health and safety in your workplace and would like a chat then please drop me a line at [email protected] or call 07799 656303.
