With less than a month to go until the HSE publishes its strategy on
the health and safety system for the 21st century, Judith Hackitt has
emphasised the Executive’s need to win “hearts and minds” by being
flexible in its approach to different businesses.
Speaking last week at the Commonwealth Club in London, during a Westminster Briefing, organised by the House Magazine, the HSE chair told delegates that people would need to look very hard to find the differences between the draft strategy and the final version, which is due to be launched on 3 June.
She remarked: “We need to become more intelligent about measuring health and safety in organisations. . . Our goal is getting everyone to do it because they believe it is the right thing to do. What that means is getting smarter at not treating people the same.”
When asked about the HSE’s reluctance to get too embroiled in investigating work-related road-traffic deaths, she stressed that a key part of the new strategy is to draw the boundaries of roles and responsibilities between the various regulators and enforcement authorities.
Richard Jones, policy and technical director of IOSH, said the current situation, under which many occupational road-safety incidents do not have to be reported under RIDDOR, needs tightening up, which would focus organisations’ minds on managing work-related road risk. But Hackitt countered: “The HSE is not an emergency service. The blue-light services will always be much better at this.”
She continued: “Adding to their burden right now in asking them to report on [such incidents] may well be counter-productive.”
To make some progress in this area, said Hackitt, directors and senior managers must practice what they preach, and ensure that any policy to do with driving at work — or drink and drugs, for example — applies equally to both them and their workforce. Said Hackitt: “If it doesn’t, there’s a massive hole in your integrity and no one will believe a word you say.”
Jones also underlined the desire for health and safety to be taught in schools as part of the curriculum. He explained: “As we all know, we have a risk-based health and safety system and so we need to make sure everyone has the ‘risk intelligence’ to operate sensibly and successfully in this environment. IOSH believes this means starting early, in schools, and then continuing throughout further and higher education, on into the workplace.
“And, as the Government rolls out its vocational training initiatives — with increased focus on developing new skills, work-based learning and apprenticeships — we have a tremendous and unmissable opportunity to get health and safety right for the future.”
However, Hackitt was hesitant about whether health and safety should become an explicit part of the curriculum, warning that this could trigger a further negative backlash from the public and media. She argued instead that health and safety should be integrated into school learning on a more general level, where pupils are educated on how to be sensible about all types of risk.
This approach, she suggested, could be more beneficial, as the real world of work demands that people take into account a number of factors when deciding what is a sensible and proportionate course of action.
