SHE09- HSE chair urges Expo visitors and exhibitors to work together

Practitioners, regulators, product developers and other stakeholders must all unite in the drive to return to the common-sense approach if we are to continue to be proud to work in health and safety.

This was HSE chair Judith Hackitt’s message to delegates and exhibitors in her keynote address to launch the Safety & Health Expo at the NEC in Birmingham this morning (Tuesday). She told those present: “It is right and proper that people look to us as experts in knowing what the law requires, which equipment to use, etc., and you have all worked very hard to gain that knowledge, and develop those products but the key part of our role is to advise others on how to integrate good health and safety practices into day-to-day business and decisions.”

Competence and leadership were themes Hackitt returned to again and again throughout her address, which she linked to the HSE’s new strategy, due to be published on 3 June. She underlined the difference between understanding what is important and what is not: “We need to know when to say we have the answer and when not. Competence is not just about knowing our stuff — it is about knowing the real difference between what is going to work and how it is best applied.”

Leadership, she explained, means “accountability and ownership, and making sure our actions fit with our words”. Without this, Hackitt warned, “we won’t have the culture to really drive good health and safety performance forward”.

As for the role of the HSE itself, she emphasised that it is to “provide strategic direction to lead the health and safety system as a whole, to inspect and enforce, to suggest legislation, and to identify emerging risks”. Recognising the roles others have to play, too, is essential, she added. Other stakeholders in health and safety, and events like Safety & Health Expo and the SHP Arena seminar, at which she was speaking, are “key to imparting knowledge to people who need solutions to problems in the workplace every day”.

As for the new strategy, Hackitt explained that “getting new value for what we do” is at the very heart of it. The decision to formulate it was borne out of the need to take account of the many changes taking place, such as the increased media pressure on health and safety, as well as the need to determine who is responsible for what and, in general, to reset the course for health and safety.

On the recent media attacks on the profession, Hackitt bemoaned how little relation the portrayal of health and safety bears to “what we actually do”. Highlighting the number of deaths, injuries and incidences of ill health that continue to occur every year, she said: “For many, health and safety is a convenient basket into which to lump a whole host of risks, many of which deter from the value of the important role we play. Employers, too, make the same mistake: they integrate a whole host of things into one set of procedures and systems, and the end result is that health and safety becomes associated with bureaucracy. All of us have a role to play in changing this culture.”