“What we do as health and safety professionals is very serious but do we perhaps take ourselves too seriously? Do we need to use a bit more humour?”
It was a question from the floor that conference chair Gavin Esler couldn’t have put better in his staged conversation with chief executive of the Health and Safety Executive, Geoffrey Podger.
The erudite Mr Podger embraced the question in the same open, relaxed style that marked the opening session on Day Two. Citing the HSE’s ‘Myth of the Month’ campaign, he agreed, saying: “We shouldn’t all rush off in a state of outraged innocence,” adding, “we’ll never entirely kill this [trivialisation of health and safety in the media], and joining in the joke can be useful.”
Gavin Esler had opened the conversation with a similar question, asking where health and safety stood on the scale between the occasional major disaster and the almost everyday ridiculing of health and safety in the media and in society. “Health and safety is about protecting people from real risk,” replied the HSE chief. “We shouldn’t let all the trivial stuff dominate us and, accepting these stories will come along from time to time, we have to get on with the real work of health and safety.”
It was a theme that Esler would return to, pointing out that people outside the world of health and safety were sceptical of the profession and its image of humourless bureaucrats filling in forms: “I think we need to make more of the serious cases we’re involved with in health and safety – the human tragedies that have occurred, very often because simple precautions haven’t been followed. This can be very powerful,” said Mr Podger.
He added: “Yes, we can joke along with the more humorous stuff but we could focus people’s minds more on our work in alleviating human misery – the more serious side of what we do.”
