IOSH Magazine- January/February 2023

Why a common sense approach to health and safety could spell trouble

THE KNOWLEDGE What are members’ expectations for 2023?

THE PRACTICE Our crucial duty of care towards casual workers

THE BUSINESS Standing up for OSH in the boardroom

THE EVIDENCE Deep dive into the bullying of immigrants

Published by Redactive Publishing Ltd

9 Dallington Street, London, EC1V 0LN

EDITOR

Emma Godfrey emma.godfrey@ioshmagazine.com

DEPUTY EDITOR Sally Hales

CONTENT SUB-EDITOR James Hundleby

DIGITAL EDITOR Kellie Mundell kellie.mundell@ioshmagazine.com

DESIGNER Craig Bowyer PICTURERESEARCHER Claire Echavarry

ADVERTISING

Display sales +44 (0) 20 7880 7613 ioshdisplay@redactive.co.uk Recruitment sales +44 (0) 20 7880 7662 ioshjobs@redactive.co.uk

PRODUCTION

Rachel Young +44 (0) 20 7880 6209 rachel.young@redactive.co.uk

PUBLISHINGDIRECTOR

Aaron Nicholls

Redactive aims to provide authoritative and accurate information at all times. Its publications are, however, for guidance only and are not an official information source.

The inclusion of advertisements and inserts within IOSH magazine and ioshmagazine.com does not constitute an endorsement of the organisation or its products/services by IOSH or Redactive. All advertisements must adhere to the British Code of Advertising Practice.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical or otherwise, without the prior written consent of the publisher and editor.

For changes to your address, please contact IOSH membership team on membership@iosh.com or 0116 257 3198.

ISSN 2396-7447

© IOSH 2023

IOSH magazine is printed by ISO 14001 certified printers.

Printed by Warners Midlands plc, The Maltings, Manor Lane, Bourne, PE10 9PH

Let’s be bold

Happy new year! How excited am I to be your IOSH president for 2022-23?

I’m blessed to be representing such a key organisation, one so close to my heart for so long, and to do so at a time when OSH is recognised as the fifth pillar of universal human rights.

In June, the International Labour Organization adopted a safe and healthy work environment as a fundamental principle and right. Once fully adopted, the world will never be the same again. If that can’t inspire all of us and our organisation to do remarkable things for a safer, healthier global workplace, what will?

So let’s be courageous. Let’s commit ourselves as OSH professionals to denying potential hazards the chance to fester. Let’s remove them at source by forging a clear, ambitious mindset, one that thinks not in terms of the management of risk but of its eradication. But, yes, we’ll have to be bold. We’ll need to challenge and influence those at the highest levels.

This emboldened approach will be further fuelled and sustained by the next generation of OSH professionals, new talent with the ambition and dynamism not only to force health, safety and wellbeing into the world’s boardrooms, but to bring it further forward in the

global public’s consciousness. We must convince career starters to see OSH as their first profession, and we need to boost IOSH stakeholder relationships and create clear pathways for progression through our membership structure. We must also help new professionals to prove themselves and their capabilities. This way, we’ll ensure our profession builds further the respect and reputation it needs to be most effective.

To feed this future pipeline, we’ll continue to invest in our dynamic Future Leaders community; we’ll help members develop through the newly launched ‘Opportunity starts here’ programme; and IOSH will continue to establish its strong presence in our schools, colleges and universities.

In projecting this drive to maximise potential, IOSH will continue to advocate for neurodiverse people and support our hugely skilled network of members and volunteers who represent so much of the global workspace. This way, we’ll ensure we tap into a wider field of talent and be sure to follow our Catch the Wave fundamentals of social sustainability in doing so.

The COVID-19 pandemic has seen the stock of the OSH profession rise to new heights, with an enhanced awareness of the value we bring to business and society. So let’s use this hard-won credibility to support and influence all those who can help create a safer, healthier world of work. And to help them to do it the right way.

OFFICIAL MAGAZINE OF

The Institution of Occupational Safety and Health (IOSH) is the world’s leading professional body for people responsible for safety and health in the workplace.

Lawrence Webb PRESIDENT, IOSH

WE’LL NEED TO CHALLENGE AND INFLUENCE THOSE AT THE HIGHEST LEVELS

THE LAST WORD

THE BIG STORY

KNOWLEDGE

THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW THIS ISSUE

‘International action is needed on all fronts, both mandatory and voluntary, and the report recommendations include improved legal frameworks and enforcement and strengthened social and legal protections.’

RICHARD JONES, FORMER IOSH HEAD OF POLICY AND REGULATORY ENGAGEMENT

2. IN NUMBERS UK work injuries up

GB Health and Safety Executive report reveals rise in workrelated injury and ill health.

working people su ered from a work-related illness in 2021-22

workers were killed in workrelated accidents in 2021-22

1. MODERN SLAVERY

GLOBAL FIGURE

TOPS 50 MILLION

The world’s first national standard on modern slavery has been published – and it is the first to be free to download. Designed to help organisations understand modern slavery risks so they can manage them effectively, BS 25700 aims to eradicate such practices throughout the world. The publication also comes on the back of a new joint report from the International Labour Organization, Walk Free and the International Organization for Migration, which estimated that there were 50 million people in situations of modern slavery in 2021, either in forced labour or in a forced marriage.

Find out more about the standard at bsigroup.com/en-GB/standards/bs-25700

... the estimated cost of injuries and ill health from current working conditions (2019-20)

working people sustained an injury at work, according to the Labour Force Survey

Source: HSE, 2022

3. NEURODIVERGENT WORKERS

More adjustments research needed

More methodically sound research to inform evidence-based guidelines on physical workplace adjustments is required to support neurodivergent workers, a joint UK-Swiss study has highlighted.

The research found that employers predominantly reduced acoustic and visual stimulation to help relieve neurodiverse workers’ sensory stress.

Very few studies, however, touched on tactile and olfactory adjustments.

Find out more at ioshmagazine.com/ neurodivergent-research

• Autism-spectrum disorder

• Attention-deficit disorder

• Dyslexia

• Dyspraxia

Conditions that fall under the umbrella of neurodiversity

6. MENTAL HEALTH

5. TRAINING

Top tips to improve quality of courses

With more than a decade of training experience, Scott Crichton CMIOSH, a principal health and safety consultant at WorkNest, explains the positive steps that OSH professionals can take to improve the effectiveness of training and increase employee engagement when delivering courses.

ioshmagazine.com/worknest-training

4. IOSH NEWS

Time to access the Blueprint tool

WHAT? IOSH members now have full access to the new and enhanced Blueprint tool.

WHY? The tool has been redeveloped to allow members to self-assess against the IOSH competency framework to identify where they are in their career and plan steps to realise ambitions.

HOW? When members access the tool, they will first be required to undergo a selfevaluation. From there, they can create a professional development plan and access a wealth of CPD resources which can help them on their career path.

For more information, see page 26.

‘PUT ISSUE ON PAR WITH FIRE SAFETY’

New research has found one in four employees in the UK has experienced suicidal thoughts while at work.

The findings also reveal more than a fifth (21%) do not feel comfortable talking to their employer about possible struggles with mentalhealth.

The research by suicide prevention charity R;pple revealed that a person is 62 times more likely to die from suicide (one in 88) than in a fire (one in 5447).

The organisation is calling on legislators and workplaces to make suicide prevention mandatory and entrenched in existing healthand safety policies.

Find out more at ioshmagazine.com/mandatory-training

7. MANAGEMENT

Return-to-work study suggestions

A UK study of line managers exploring support for employees returning after long-term absence due to common mental disorders highlights five behavioural strategies that could enhance HR and senior management policies and practices. Research by the University of Sheffield and Affinity Health

identified strategies researchers argue could support a sustained return to work: managing workload, flexible working time arrangements, location of work, mental health check-ups and long-term support.

Read more at ioshmagazine.com/ she eld-a nity

8. DID YOU KNOW?

Energy price crisis: food and drink sector

Recent figures from the O ce for National Statistics reveals the impact of rising costs on UK food and drink service businesses.

1 IN 20

food and drink service firms said they planned to stop trading for two or more additional days a week in November 2022 to reduce energy costs

9.

IOSH NEWS

West Africa Conference

WHAT? IOSH is to hold its 2023 West Africa Conference at the Cedi Conference Centre, University of Ghana in Accra.

10. DRUGS AND ALCOHOL

Majority of workers ‘accept testing’

Most workers would comply with a corporate alcohol and drug testing policy, according to the findings of a survey that informs Dräger UK’s 2022 Safety at work report.

The findings reveal that 83% of workers sampled would comply as they believe it is in everyone’s interest to be safe at work.

of businesses in the sector said they’d stopped trading for two or more extra days a week in the three months before November 2022. This was among the highest of any sector

21%

of businesses in the sector said they were likely to reduce trading hours, even if they were still operating for the same number of days

58%

said high energy prices were their main concern for November 2022, the highest percentage of any group

6%  2 IN 5

41% said they expected their prices to increase in November, compared with an overall average of 28%

WHEN? From 7 to 8 February. WHY? It is the first in-person West Africa Conference IOSH will have held since early 2020. It is being held as part of IOSH’s ongoing commitment to support members in West Africa and to drive improvements in OSH standards in the region. The conference will be themed around the International Labour Organization’s declaration that a safe and healthy work environment is a fundamental principle and right.

More details at iosh.com/wac

Perhaps more surprising is the high level of compliance reported by home-working respondents, with 70% agreeing to submit to testing when they are working remotely.

The report suggests the safety protocols faced during the pandemic may have prompted a change in attitudes to health and safety.

ioshmagazine.com/ drugs-alcohol-drager

11. WHO

MENTAL HEALTH AT WORK GUIDELINES PUBLISHED

The World Health Organization has issued guidelines on mental health at work that provide evidence-based recommendations to promote mental health, prevent mental health conditions and enable people living with mental health conditions to thrive.

The recommendations cover organisational and individual interventions, manager and worker training, returning to work, and gaining employment.

An estimated 15% of working-age adults have a mental disorder at any point in time.

Explore the guidance at ioshmagazine.com/who-mental-health

Behind the headlines

We delve into the OSH issues making the news.

NEURODIVERSITY

CALL TO CREATE MORE DIVERSE WORKFORCES

A chartered psychologist is calling on employers to consider neurodivergent employees when planning where staff should work so that these individuals can thrive in the workplace.

Writing on the Diversity and Inclusion Leaders website, Dr Nancy Doyle, founder and owner of social enterprise Genius Within CIC, notes that around 15% to 20% of the global population is neurodivergent, so employers cannot afford to ignore them (Doyle, 2022).

Neurodivergence includes conditions such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), autism, dyslexia and bipolar disorder.

Nancy advises employers to consider two core psychological concepts that affect most neurodivergent employees – executive dysfunction and sensory sensitivity – when planning work patterns and practices.

Executive dysfunction compromises a person’s ability to think and concentrate; in some cases, she warns, they ‘might struggle with basic admin and compliance, even when their work is creative and seemingly highly skilled’.

Those who struggle with sensory sensitivity, meanwhile, can quickly feel

overwhelmed, for example, by bright colours and loud noises in the office.

Although Nancy recommends remote working, she warns that it can present its own challenges. For instance, working from home increases the neurodivergent person’s reliance on videoconferencing and written communication and this can be problematic.

Nancy points out that many people with ADHD struggle to manage their time effectively while working remotely and ‘miss the motivational boost that comes from a quick, informal chat’.

She shares some pointers so that line managers can minimise the

associated risks around videoconferencing etiquette and how to best maintain a work/life balance.

Her advice is to involve affected staff in key decisions because they are more likely to buy into an approach that they have had some say in rather than one that has been forced upon them.

What are the challenges?

Nancy’s insights are important, her advice is sound, and there is clearly great value in acting on her

suggestions. However, it does pose several practical challenges for line managers who are already under huge pressure to make provisions for a wide range of employee groups at a time when business resources will become increasingly stretched. What’s more, as she admits, neurodivergent employees are not a homogeneous group, so that means tailoring approaches to the individual and the costs and time associated with this.

Even with the best intentions, some line managers may find that their authority is undermined by senior management, whose priority in an uncertain economic market is the pursuit of profit over employee wellbeing.

To read the original article, visit bit.ly/BTH-neurodiversity

Nancy’s advice poses practical challenges for line managers

WORK/LIFE BALANCE

BUSINESS REPORT WARNS OF TWO-TIER WORKPLACES

A new report from Business in the Community (BITC), a British business-community outreach charity, warns about the risk of creating a two-tier workforce after it was found that employees whose mental health and wellbeing would bene fi t the most from having a say in how they work are the least likely to achieve a good work/life balance.

Your job can be good for you (BITC, 2022), which draws on insights from BITC’s YouGov 2022 survey of 4225 employees, roundtables with business leaders, expert interviews and a review of recent evidence, suggests people in board-level roles and those earning more than £20,000 per year are more likely to achieve job exibility.

On the other hand, workrelated poor mental health is higher among employees from a black, Asian, mixed race or other ethnically diverse backgrounds, along with women, people aged between 18 and 35, employees who have experienced disability and LGBTQ+ people.

The BITC publication comes at a time when the UK’s mental health is deteriorating and work is recognised as being a

signi fi cant in uence in this respect, with the report citing 36% of employees experiencing workrelated poor mental health in the past year, although this is a slight improvement on the 2020 data disclosures.

BITC argues that enabling employees to co-create how they work has been shown to reduce the leading workrelated mental health risks, namely workload, long hours, excessive pressure and being unable to take leave while also promoting work/life balance.

And the publication notes that, although opportunities to personalise working practices may di ff er across sectors and roles, it is possible to co-create jobs in some form in nearly every role and at every level.

The report includes several case studies that demonstrate how employees have been able to access greater exibility in the workplace, personalising the way they work in ways that have met both the individual and the business’s needs.

What are the challenges?

BITC’s recommendations do have considerable merit. However, the report

also raises a few important issues related to these recommendations.

Not surprisingly, the role of line managers is critical. The report argues that managers ‘must be trusted to co-create ways of working that balance the needs of both employee wellbeing and business needs’ and BITC outlines six broad categories where adaptations can be made.

The di culty, as the report highlights, is that employees are more uncomfortable than they were in 2020 to talk about a range of issues, including stress, gender, race, disability and sexual orientation, which suggests there is a trust issue in relation to line managers. This may not be

an easy one to resolve in somebusinesses.

Data from the YouGov 2022 employee survey backs this up and reveals that very few employees access support to manage their mental health problems at work. In fact, 12% who had experienced a work-related mental health problem said they had been forced out, demoted against their wishes, not promoted, ordisciplined.

This fi gure rose to 20% for those at board level, which brings into question the earlier statement that those in board level roles are necessarily more likely to achieve job exibility.

Read the report at bit.ly/ BTH-worklife-balance

The key to reducing work-related mental health risks is to personalise working practices

The UK Justice Committee’s 2021 recommendation to make better use of coroners’ Reports to prevent future deaths (PFD) highlighted that harnessing the knowledge and experience of this group of professionals in conversations around work-related deaths is vital. One thing Kevin McLoughlin (inset, right), senior coroner for West Yorkshire in the UK, has witnessed in recent years is a change in the nature of fatalities among workers – particularly since COVID-19.

‘A generation ago, we used to think only about the risks to construction workers and people who worked in manufacturing plants. But now, office-based mental health issues are more recognised,’ he says. ‘Employers should be aware of the pressure they may be putting people under by imposing demanding targets on individuals who may be isolated and deprived of the camaraderie of having supportive workmates around them.’

For some, tragically, it’s too much to bear. ‘Suicide is one of the things that I’ve increasingly looked at,’ says Kevin. ‘I saw a statistic recently that between 2009 and 2019 about 67,000 people killed themselves in the UK (NCISH, 2022). It’s heartbreaking and beyond astonishing .’

Tracking patterns

However, the ability to study trends and pinpoint those at higher risk of suicide more accurately brings hope of improving the situation, Kevin adds. ‘In Leeds – part of my patch – we’ve got maps for particular areas of the city where suicide is prevalent and, lo and behold, they coincide with poverty. We can even see which tower blocks have a higher incidence of self-harm. So people are trying to drill down into this.

‘Currently we have to deal with things as one-off cases, but it shouldn’t stop us trying to look at the overall patterns and what we do about it.’

Kevin, whose background is in OSH (he is a Chartered Fellow and a former IOSH

Fatal flaws

WORDS HELEN BIRD

UK senior coroner Kevin McLoughlin on the changing nature of work-related fatalities and the challenges of getting a true picture.

trustee) and who practised as a barrister before taking up an appointment as a senior coroner, also observes trends among his own cases. ‘It shines through on the suicide cases that young males are more impulsive. Three-quarters of those who take their own lives are male. This suggests that if someone had been able to intervene at the moment of crisis, it could have been averted.’

There are also barriers to reporting on deaths accurately – which became all too familiar during the pandemic. ‘The

Those working from home may feel deprived of the camaraderie of supportive workmates

legacy of COVID is one that everybody is wrestling with,’ says Kevin. ‘How many people died due to COVID, as opposed to dying with COVID from pre-existing disease? The more you look at the issue, the more complicated it becomes, in that a lot of the people who died of COVID came into hospital with multiple comorbidities and may have died anyway. Equally, there may be cases where just the reverse is the case.

‘So trying to delve into the statistics and work out the true picture is challenging – and it may take years to clarify the situation.’

And for all the potential benefits around sharing – and learning from – PFD reports, the reality isn’t quite so simple. ‘Coroners are conscientiously making these reports. The problem at present is analysing them and identifying the learning priorities on a national basis. I think a lot more work is needed to analyse and codify these reports to determine the lessons that society should learn.’

Improvements in practice

Happily, Kevin has been able to see the role his personal reports have played in improving health and safety practices.

He recalls two separate cases where workers had died while unloading large glazing units.

‘I made PFD reports to say that this is an industry-wide problem. When heavy glazing units are tightly packed in containers or bound together on stillages, those unloading them need instructions on the sequence in which to cut securing straps. Moreover, the instructions need to be presented in such a way that people speaking a variety of languages can follow them.’

He says the recipients of his reports in the glazing industry responded in an exemplary way, forming groups that devised constructive ways of dealing with the issue. ‘It was rewarding for me to have identified a problem and seen such a positive response from the particular industry concerned.’

Learning from tragedy

Kevin has also seen an improvement in risk assessments within organisations over the years. ‘In the early days, risk assessments classifying a hazard as low risk were sometimes exposed as embarrassing following a fatality. But over the years, the quality of risk assessments has improved. I take this as a demonstration of the contribution made by OSH professionals to workplace safety.’

Kevin’s hope for the future is that inquests following workplace fatalities will be approached by the lawyers involved in a less adversarial manner, less preoccupied with the possibility of a prosecution. ‘When someone has lost their life, the dominant thought should be “How do we learn from this painful tragedy?”’

access the reference, visit ioshmagazine.com/coroner-mcloughlin

To

WE’VE GOT MAPS FOR AREAS OF THE CITY WHERE SUICIDE IS PREVALENT. WE CAN EVEN SEE WHICH TOWER BLOCKS HAVE A HIGHER INCIDENCE OF SELF-HARM

Judge dismisses John Lewis car park injury appeal

In May 2015, Kanwarjit Singh Juj, 83, tripped on a kerb next to a disabled bay in which his wife (who was disabled) had parked their car. He sustained a fractured wrist, maxillofacial injuries and a traumatic brain injury.

The car park was adjacent to a Waitrose supermarket in Ruislip, Middlesex, UK. Although the car park was owned by the local authority and not the store, the appellant claimed that John Lewis Partnership plc, which owns Waitrose, had breached its duty of care under the Occupier’s Liability Act 1957. This claim was dismissed but the decision was appealed.

John Lewis denied liability for the fall, saying that it was an occupier of the car park. The company also claimed the kerb on which he tripped did not pose a danger, and the fall was a ‘true accident’.

The judge ruled at the initial trial that the car park’s design, including the location of the kerb, was an unreasonable danger for the users of that bay – the disabled –which did in fact breach the Occupier’s Liability Act 1957. However, they ruled that as an occupier, John Lewis’s control was limited to dealing with immediate hazards and reporting these matters to the local authority that owned the car park. The respondent was not required to make any structural changes, cordon off bays for use,

or paint the kerb to make it more visible. The trial judge ruled that nothing the respondent had done, or failed to do, had caused the accident.

The appellant brought an appeal against the judgment and argued that the original judge’s limiting of the respondent’s duties as an occupier was incorrect.

On appeal, the judge considered three areas in determining the case: Was the respondent an occupier? Did the respondent have a duty of care? What caused the accident?

For the first point, the appeal judge said that the original judge was wrong to exclude the respondent’s ability to put up warning signs if necessary for any issues (such as the kerb), which had not been remedied by the local authority. They ruled that John Lewis was a joint occupier of the car park in this respect.

The appeal judge then considered the respondent’s duty of care to the appellant. The presence of the kerb and the size of the bay were obvious to any user of it – the

appellant and his wife had parked there on previous occasions without problems. The kerb in question was not in a state of disrepair or an abnormal height – so the presence of the kerb and its proximity to the bay was not unusual and it did not constitute a trap. Therefore, the appeal judge ruled that the respondent came under no duty to warn visitors of any kind of the presence of the kerb: it was obvious without warning. The kerb’s presence, state and location did not present a degree of risk high enough to trigger a specific duty of care.

Finally, the appeal judge considered the cause of the appellant’s accident. They ruled that the appellant was aware of the kerb when he tripped on it and the breach of any potential duty by the respondent had not caused the accident. Consequently, they agreed with the original trial judge that the appellant’s fall was indeed a ‘true accident’ without a breach of duty by the respondent. The appeal was therefore dismissed.

The parking bay kerb did not present a degree of risk high enough to trigger a specific duty of care

A man who tripped in a parking bay argued that the retailer owed him a duty of care.

This sponsored content has been provided by Information Systems, available at cedrec.com

NEW LEGISLATION, GUIDANCE AND CONSULTATION

BUILDING SAFETY

Regulation amends for power generation

The Building (Amendment) (Wales) (No 2) Regulations 2022 make amendments to the Building Regulations 2010 to extend provisions relating to on-site generation of electricity in Wales to cover non-domestic buildings from 29 March 2023. Where a system for on-site electricity generation is installed, it and its electrical output should be appropriately sized and have effective controls. It must also be commissioned by testing and adjusted as necessary to ensure it produces the most electricity it reasonably can.

cedr.ec/8ky

BUILDING REGULATIONS

New practical guidance approved

The secretary of state has approved two new documents that give practical guidance on meeting the requirements of the Building Regulations 2010 in England. They focus on new requirements within Part R of schedule 1 to the regulations, relating to:

• Physical infrastructure and network connection fornewdwellings

• Physical infrastructure for high-speed electronic communications networks. These approved documents applied from 26December2022.

cedr.ec/8m0; cedr.ec/8l0

FIRE SAFETY

Scotland gets new fireworks controls

The Fireworks and Pyrotechnic Articles (Scotland) Act 2022 imposes stricter control on the sale and use of fireworks in Scotland to improve public safety. It introduces a licensing system, with mandatory safety training, for those who wish to purchase and use fireworks. It also specifies powers for local authorities to designate firework control zones, as well as restrictions on the supply and use of fireworks.

cedr.ec/8lz

WORKPLACE STATISTICS

Review of injuries, illnesses and fatalities

The Health and Safety Authority for Ireland has published its review of statistics for 2020-21. Workplace fatalities dropped by 30% in 2021; however, 38 people still lost their lives in work-related incidents. Falls from height and the loss of control of a vehicle or its

attachments were the most common causes of fatalities in the period, accounting for 11 deaths each. Although there was a reduction in workplace fatalities, the number of non-fatal incidents at work remained high, increasing 8% on the previous year with a total of 8279 incidents.

The top three causes of non-fatal injuries reported were manual handling (2656 incidents), slipping and falling (2007), and loss of control of an object machine or vehicle(931).

cedr.ec/8l2

CHEMICALS

New hazard classes added to CLP

The European Commission ran a consultation on a draft regulation that intends to introduce new specified hazard classes as part of its revision to regulations on classification, labelling and packaging (CLP) of substances and mixtures. One of the key changes is to introduce new hazard classes to cover substances with the following properties:

• Human health and environmental endocrinedisruptors

• Persistent, bioaccumulative and toxic

• Very persistent and verybioaccumulative

• Persistent, mobile and toxic

• Very persistent and very mobile substances.

cedr.ec/8l4

TRANSPORT

Change to directive on dangerous goods

Directive (EU) 2022/1999 on uniform procedures for checks on the transport of dangerous goods by road codifies and replaces directive 95/50/EC on the same subject. The directive continues to apply to checks carried out by member states on the transport of dangerous goods by road in vehicles travelling in their territory or entering it from a third country. It ensures these vehicles are checked on su cient occasions and establishes a uniform and comprehensive list of items to be checked.

cedr.ec/8l5

WORK EQUIPMENT

New machinery safety guidance

The Waste Industry Safety and Health Forum (WISH) has published new information documents relating to machinery used in recycling and waste plants, covering:

• Horizontal plane balers

• Belt conveyors

• Trommel screens.

WISH has also published general guidance on the main principles of machinery safety in recycling and recoveryplants.

cedr.ec/8l6; cedr.ec/8l7; cedr.ec/8l9; cedr.ec/8la

THE KNOWLEDGE PROSECUTIONS

RETAIL

What happened?

In February 2017, 10-year-old Kaden Reddick and his family were shopping in the Reading, UK, branch of retail company Topshop. Kaden crawled beneath a queue barrier, which came away from the floor and landed on him. The 110kg object struck his skull and killed him.

Design and installation

The queue barrier had been installed

three years earlier during a major store refurbishment and was a notifiable project under Construction, Design and Management Regulations. The barrier was secured by contractor Stoneforce Ltd with just wood screws and rawlplugs. The screws were described by experts as being suitable for hanging pictures from the wall, not for stabilising a top-heavy and inherently unstable piece of retail furniture.

Risk assessments

No risk assessment had been carried out on the queue barrier, either preinstallation or into its use once in store. Although Topshop did have store risk assessments, including one that covered cuts and falling objects, it did not consider the queue barrier specifically, and in general there had been no consideration about how this item, or ones like it, differed from the main structure, such as walls, or furniture that was regularly relocated – for example, wall poles.

Design disagreements

General health and safety documentation did acknowledge the presence of children on-site and how they may be inclined to interact with items in store, but this was not considered or highlighted in relation to installation of equipment, such as queue barriers.

Sentencing

After an investigation lasting nearly six years, Arcadia Group Ltd, Topshop/ Topman and Stoneforce were sentenced for breaching section 3 of the Health and Safety at Work Act and fined £1m. The company is still liable for the fine, despite having gone into administration.

Lessons learned

MANUFACTURING

NESTLÉ PROSECUTED AFTER WORKER TRAPPED ARM IN ROLO-MAKING MACHINE

Food manufacturing firm Nestlé has been ordered to pay more than £800,000 after a worker’s arm was drawn into a conveyor machine.

What happened

In November 2020, a maintenance technician at its UK factory in Newcastle upon Tyne was investigating a problem beneath the conveyor belt of the ‘Rolo Racetrack’ machine. His sleeve became caught in the roller above his head. He was unable to free his arm and shouted for help. The 25-year-old sustained lifechanging injuries.

Breaches for prosecution

The investigation found Nestlé had not properly assessed the risk created by the rollers under the conveyor belt and failed to guard the roller, which was a dangerous part due to a ‘nip point’. It was also found that Nestlé failed to provide

a safe system of work in relation to the maintenance of the machine and failed to provide a guard to prevent access to dangerous parts.

In court

South Tyneside Magistrates’ Court was told a similar incident happened at Nestlé’s plant in Halifax, UK, but the firm had failed to take appropriate action. Nestlè UK admitted breaching regulation 11(1) of the Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations and was fined £800,000, plus costs of £7776. It has since spent more than £700,000 at the Newcastle factory to make the site and machines safer.

More information

We spoke to the investigating inspector in this case to get the story behind the headlines. Get more detail, including key lessons for IOSH members, at ioshmagazine. com/nestle-injuries

IN BRIEF CHEMICALS OSH o cer failed to raise cryo-chamber concerns

A director who installed a cryotherapy chamber at a site in Glasgow, Scotland, in 2020 was unfairly dismissed, a tribunal has ruled, because the technical director and principal health and safety o cer at the business failed to raise concerns about the work undertaken.

For the full story andto find out the five allegations faced by the claimant and the reasons given for his dismissal, visit ioshmagazine. com/cryoserve-o cer

TRANSPORT

Stagecoach fined £380k over driver’s crush injury

Plymouth Magistrates’ Court recently fined bus firm Stagecoach Devon Ltd £380,000, with £18,000 in costs, after it pleaded guilty to breaching section 2(1) of the Health and Safety at Work Act after one of its drivers suffered lifechanging injuries. David Heathfield was crushed between a reversing bus and a stationary vehicle at a depot in Torquay, England.

He suffered compound multiple fractures of his arm. We spoke to GB Health and Safety Executive inspector, JamesCollins, about what happened: ioshmagazine. com/stagecoach-heathfield

Bernard Matthews fined £400k after worker paralysed

MANUFACTURING

WORKER DIES FROM BURNS AFTER

FALL INTO

HOT WATER TANK

THE INCIDENT

In January 2018, a worker at Pan Glo (UK) Ltd in Lancashire, in the UK – previously known as Cleanbake Ltd – fell into a tank of water heated to 76°C, suffering 37% burns to his body. Despite being pulled from the tank by a colleague almost immediately and rushed to hospital, the man died from his injuries a week later.

At the factory, the industrial baking tins the firm makes were

The case

Food manufacturer Bernard Matthews has been fined £400,000 after an employee sustained a pierced left lung, several broken ribs, four fractured vertebrae and a spinal bleed after being drawn into a large screw conveyor. Colin Frewin was left permanently paralysed and spent six months in hospital following the incident at the company’s Suffolk manufacturing plant in the UK.

The incident

In January 2020, the 54-year-old had been tasked with cleaning a large screw conveyor used to move and chill poultry turkeys. As he tried to dislodge a turkey that had become stuck using a squeegee, Colin was drawn into the machine. It was only when a colleague noticed he was missing from the

gantry and heard his cries for help that the emergency stop was pulled.

Similar incidents

Investigators found an unsafe system of work meant that the chillers remained running when Colin went to dislodge the turkey. There was another incident at the same plant five months earlier, when a turkey deboning line had to be shut down after developing a fault.

At Chelmsford Crown Court, Bernard Matthews Food Ltd admitted breaching section 2(1) of the Health and Safety at Work Act. As well as the £400,000 fine, the company was ordered to pay costs of £15,000.

Read more at ioshmagazine.com/ bernard-matthews-frewin

loaded into large cages and moved by crane into huge tanks, filled with different substances. The tanks were placed in such a way that workerscould only access their crucial working parts by climbing over the lids – an error in oorspace planning.

THE INVESTIGATION

The inquiry found there were no risk assessments and no safe systems of work in place for maintenance procedures. It also found the health and safety manager had been at the site for only a week; the company had previously used consultants and there was no formal health and safety system; and the structure of thetank lids was unsuitable.

THE FINDINGS

The GB Health and Safety Executive investigation found there were a number of failings that contributed to the incident across a spectrum of areas, including planning, equipment, management and safetyculture.

THE PROSECUTION

At Preston Magistrates’ Court, Pan Glo (UK) Ltd pleaded guilty to breaching section 2(1) of the Healthand Safety at Work Act. Thecompany was fined £200,000, as well as court costs of£14,597.

Read an interview with the HSE’s investigator at ioshmagazine.com/panglo-death

AROUND THE GLOBE

SEVEN SUFFER BRAIN INJURIES DURING COMMERCIAL DIVE OPERATION

DOF Subsea Australia has been convicted of breaching its health and safety duties after seven divers sustained neurological injuries. In 2017, a team of divers were repairing subsea infrastructure at the Ichthys gas field in the Timor Sea, at a water depth of 778ft to 885ft (237m to 270m).

Seven of the divers complained of injuries. Australia’s independent offshore energy regulator, NOPSEMA, found they were injured during a process known as ‘blowdown’, which involves a chamber being pressurised with helium and oxygen to a storage depth close to that at which they were due to work. The dive was described as Australia’s deepest-ever commercial dive. Sentencing is due to take place at a later date.

CAR PART PLANT WORKERS FIGHT 13 FIRES IN 2

YEARS

A car parts manufacturer in Ohio, US, has been cited by US Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) for exposing workers to fires, and failing to train them on initial fire identification and extinguisher use.

OSHA found the polyethylene Hematite heats to create molten plastic for parts catches fire in ovens. It is easily ignited and di cult to suppress. Between June 2020 and June 2022, the company had 13 fires. Employees had used portable extinguishers until fires were out or the sprinkler system activated.

OSHA cited Woodbridge Englewood – which trades as Hematite – for one wilful and nine serious safety violations, and proposed penalties of $271,403 (£227,289).

The wider view

VIDEO

Keeping watch on climate change

An incredible 46,000 of you have so far viewed IOSH magazine’s latest video on the health risks of climate change. After a year of extreme weather events including heat waves, bushfires, rising seas, monsoon rains and devastating floods, this video explains how OSH managers can help businesses adapt to climate change.

DON’T MISS THESE MUST-READS

COP27, climate change and OSH

As leaders from around the world convened in Egypt for COP27 in November, a new report from The Lancet revealed that heatwaves cause the most deaths of all natural disasters (Romanello et al, 2022). Exposure to extreme heat increasingly threatens worker health, with outdoor workers, pregnant women and older people among the at-risk groups. Visit ioshmagazine.com/COP27-OSH

Thinking differently on neurodiversity

One aspect of occupational health, safety and wellbeing that is commonly overlooked – because it isn’t visually apparent – is neurodiversity. We spoke to a health and safety professional about her autism and how neurodiversity can affect individuals and workplaces. See ioshmagazine.com/thinking-differently

Passing the ball

FREE CPD WEBINARS

Success in nearmiss and hazard observation reporting

Every non-injury incident should be seen as a shot across your company’s bows. They are free warnings that an incident with injuries is possible and even likely to occur. Learnhowinfrastructure, housing andproperty services group United Living took a strategic approach to incident management to achieve 10 times the number of close-call reports in this webinar. For more, visit ioshmagazine.com/webinars/ ecoonline/near-miss

Best practice to reduce the risk of respiratory illness

We’ve known for some time that occupational disease is the leading cause of workplace fatality. And new research is now giving us some additional clues to better explain why. But is your company doing enough? How well is your occupational hygiene(OH) programme functioning to reduce the risk of respiratory illness? And where is further investment needed to ensure your people and your business remain out of harm’s way? Hear from software provider Cority’s Sean Baldry and Shanna Biggs as they explore how organisations can leverage the current environment to refocus efforts and solicit additional resources to improve their OH processes, and keep every employee breathing easily. Go to ioshmagazine.com/webinars/ cority/hygiene

ENEWSLETTER

gby

As the son of former IOSH president Jimmy Quinn, Macauley Quinn AIOSH (pictured) has picked up some key traits that will help him in his OSH career. But he is also well placed to bring his own unique outlook and experience. In this interview, he reveals how his elite rugby background informs his own approach to health and safety. Go to ioshmagazine.com/passing-the-ball

ISSUE ARCHIVE

Did you know that you can read all the back issues of IOSH magazine online? Visit ioshmagazine.com/issues

Do you receive our awardwinning twice-weekly eNewsletter? For all the latest news, views and magazine articles, subscribe for free at ioshmagazine.com/enewsletter

Chris Streatfeild

CFIOSH, director,

Renewable Safety

The energy transition and electrification of our energy system will further accelerate in 2023. Driven by net-zero commitments, the renewable energy sector in the UK and around the world will demand hundreds of thousands of new workers. We need workers with hard and soft skills who can design, install, commission, operate and maintain the technologies (for example wind, storage, solar and green hydrogen) and the supporting infrastructure.

The sector will need to recruit from a wide and diverse talent pool, including new entrants from college, first degrees and apprenticeship programmes. We also expect to see many workers transitioning from related sectors with complementary technical and safety skills such as oil and gas and the military. We also hope to see a continuation of the drive for further gender and cultural diversity, which is essential to help stimulate innovation and support this transition.

To support this, I have three hopes and expectations for 2023: skills – a laser focus on developing essential STEM skills and a culture of lifelong learning; safe by design – recognising the importance of organisational design, contracting strategies and work management on health and safety; metrics – better understanding of the positive use of leading safety indicators and the unrealised potential of big data and analytics.

Bridget Leathley

CFIOSH, freelance health and safetyconsultant

I’d love to say that 2023 will see all dirty and dangerous jobs replaced by robots. I’d like to say that we’ll make great strides in slowing down climate change. It would be great if I could predict that some well-established software solutions for managing incident reporting, risk assessment actions or hazardous substances will be widely adopted to make sure practicable controls are always applied to foreseeable hazards.

This year is unlikely to see such revolutions, but I believe there will be an evolution in how we use technology in health and safety. I took part in a workshop recently in which we used 360-degree video in virtual reality headsets as part of the safety training. I have clients who, having seen the benefits of saving travel time and costs during lockdown, want to continue with virtual classrooms. Some artificial intelligence approaches that were just theory a few years ago are now incorporated into affordable products, in some cases spurred on by the pandemic. In particular, computer vision was adopted by some to monitor social distancing but is now used by the likes of retail firm Marks & Spencer to support coaching conversations. Let’s hope for more intelligence in 2023, both artificial and natural.

Martin Wilshire

CMIOSH,director, health, safety and wellbeing, Multiplex

Pressures from demands for wage parity and increased worker migration across

The future of OSH

What are IOSH members’ expectations for the year ahead? Will there be changes in legislation or policy, or will it be business as usual? Here are some of your responses.

businesses and industries will, in some cases, bring priorities into conflict at corporate level. In construction, the unskilled and transient workforce is increasingly vulnerable to exploitation and mental ill health. As employers, we will have to work harder and smarter to keep our people safe, engaged, mentally well, competent and aware, but we should also consider how we improve retention.

Empathetic and values-driven leadership will be critical to businesses at such a challenging time and the IOSH Catch the Wave initiative will have even greater resonance in providing the right environment, values and culture to develop and retain people as the foundation of productivity and profitability. Those employers that rely on a significant supply chain labour base should be ever watchful to ensure their ethical labour policies and safeguards are proactively working to protect those at risk.

These challenges come at a time when the Building Safety Act secondary legislation will come into force during 2023, placing greater emphasis on duty holders to ensure competence not only technically, but also behaviourally, throughout the construction industry. Once again, ethical principles, standards and conduct will be at the forefront of creating a safer built environment.

John Lacey CFIOSH, IOSH past-president and honorary adviser, IOSH Hong Kong Branch

It is of prime importance that practitioners start to strongly rebuild OSH alongside industry and social needs. Future business planning will need to incorporate health and safety as a key building block to success.

In construction, major challenges continue to exist. The Building Safety Act will require clear lines of influence on all projects. Designers will have to focus on safety in design, with all supply chain

GLOBAL RIGHTS

Spotlight on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals

How can OSH professionals heed the call for urgent global action?

I believe there will be an acceleration in investments in green energy to address the global crisis and stick to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). New OSH job opportunities will be available, and organisations will be facing increasing personnel turnover as people look to improve incomes. OSH professionals will face huge challenges in managing fast-track projects, balancing production and prevention. They will have to develop competencies in new technologies and related risks alongside a new regulatory framework.

Mohamed Amine Zahr TechIOSH, group health safety, security and environment manager, Moroccan Agency for Sustainable Energy (Masen)

It is crucial the world refocuses on the SDGs, social sustainability and OSH capacity. This means prioritising responsible leadership, ethical practice and inclusive workforces essential for the future.

The key role of OSH professionals continues to evolve, as we seek active partnerships to deliver progress and the UN SDGs. This work entails raising awareness of OSH as a fundamental right worldwide and highlighting its many socioeconomic benefits. These include minimising human and economic cost, supporting business performance and a ‘race-to-the-top’, as well as opposing any harmful OSHderegulation.

OSH professionals can use tailored approaches, sharing case studies on creating long-lasting social value and promoting principles from ISO 45001 and other relevant standards, including on mental health and wellbeing, infectious diseases, modern slavery, performance evaluation and climate change. Meanwhile, as individuals, we can continually improve, using the IOSH Blueprint tool to enhance our business and sustainability skills, as well as those for OSH and ethical practice. And we can encourage support for initiatives like the UN Global Accelerator for decent jobs and IOSH’s Catch the Wave, aiming to ‘leave no one behind’.

Richard Jones CFIOSH, former IOSH head of policy

It is imperative organisations start to tackle the UN’s SDGs at local and national level. Every safety professional is part of this challenge. One of the 17 SDGs is good health and wellbeing; however, our challenge over the next year shouldn’t be to solely focus on this area but to integrate as many of the SDGs into our practices as possible. We need to divest from linear and silo thinking over the next year. We need to integrate safety, health and wellbeing across our businesses and initiate conversations about sustainability. If we become the voice of sustainability, we can start to change how wellbeing, safety and health is prioritised in our businesses.

Chris Clark CMIOSH, senior safety, health and environment adviser, infrastructure, nuclear, Morgan Sindall

members taking due notice of their influence and responsibilities as duty holders.

Top management and OSH professionals will need to take a close look at section 5 of ISO 45001 and embed its guidance into organisations to install the right strategy and culture in rebuilding successful businesses and prevent risk from failure or prosecution, should incidents occur. OSH professionals in the year ahead and beyond need to engage with board members and mentor them on the way forward. Get it right at the top and the rest will follow.

Jay Johnson

CMIOSH, associate

consultant, Inverroy Crisis Management

Lessons learned from the pandemic will be gathered and scrutinised by OSH professionals. These will be incorporated into crisis and continuity plans, which OSH professionals will be more involved with as the pandemic highlighted the need for robust crisis and continuity planning and mitigation. OSH professionals and organisations will be planning for disruptions caused by the events in Ukraine and the rise in the cost of living.

Daniel Dyball TechIOSH, QHSE manager, Prior Power Solutions

We have access to some impressive technology from autonomous manufacturing to state-of-theart safety systems, yet we still experience fatalities that could have been easily prevented. We focus a lot of time and money

on ensuring employees are competent but don’t invest that same time and money into safer technology. I don’t see any legislation being reviewed or changed to support the growth of safer manufacturing but I do see the industry’s organisations incorporating ‘lean manufacturing’ [a methodology that focuses on minimising waste while maximising productivity] to further improve the safety of their employees.

The mental health of employees is something that we continue to adapt to.

For the next 12 months, I hope to raise awareness of the importance of cardiopulmonary resuscitation training and safe use of an automated external defibrillator within all businesses. With more than 30,000 out-of-hospital cardiac arrests occurring a year in the UK, the power to save a life could be in your hands.

Hayley Guppy

GradIOSH, audit and

risk, Ministry of Defence

I expect that

the issues for the safety profession – and indeed the global workforce – will endure from the COVID-era. Business continuity will again be in focus with industry investing and preparing for future pandemics. An immediate focus for the profession will also be on continuity testing for possible blackouts. I expect businesses to focus on energy-saving initiatives due to potential shortages and significant price increases.

Appointing safety professionals is always a challenge, but I expect all recruitment will become more difficult with the labour market tightening. A shortage in workforce has historically led to increased pressure on a positive safety culture.

Jordyn Aitken

GradIOSH, Asia-Pacific health, safety and environment manager, Alltech

I expect we will see further focus on mental health, especially given the call from the World Health Organization and International Labour Organization for action to address declining mental health in the working population. Additionally, I believe businesses will need to continue to adjust to the effects of the pandemic and how employees want to work. This has – and will – put some additional strain on the OSH profession from a technical point of view; however, the outcome of these potential changes to the way we work will have a knock-on effect on health and safety performance, and so it is important employees are listened to and their psychological safety protected.

Matthew Hall

GradIOSH, health and safety adviser, Rolls-Royce Nuclear

I expect to see more of the same from last year in nuclear safety, such as continual improvement as an industry across all areas of safety but still with a great deal of work to do with regard to containing current and new risks. Mental health – rightly – seems to be getting a lot of attention across both nuclear and other industries, but there is more work to be done. It’s easier to speak up now and more help is at hand. This undoubtedly needs to continue through 2023 and beyond. We need to keep focus.

Changes to REACH [Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals] and COMAH [Control of Major Accident Hazards] legislations post-Brexit will also be a challenge to keep up with, but I see a very positive 2023 – and beyond –for the nuclear industry, given how much emerging work is across many markets.

I EXPECT BUSINESSES TO FOCUS ON ENERGY-SAVING INITIATIVES DUE TO POTENTIAL SHORTAGES AND SIGNIFICANT PRICE INCREASES

Karen Godfrey

CMIOSH, head of safety, health, environment, quality and security (nuclear), Morgan

Sindall Infrastructure

I’d expect there to be a continued focus on occupational health and wellbeing with mental health at the forefront. With the cost of living crisis, we should be preparing for an increase in cases of poor mental health – as a result of money worries, relationship issues, poor nutrition and fatigue – which will have a knock-on impact in the workplace and result in an increased risk of accidents and incidents.

In line with this, I’d hope to see the provision of trained mental health first aiders become a legal requirement in 2023. While this will not prevent our colleagues from developing mental ill health, it will ensure that they are signposted to the help that they need. An aspiration for my team is to continue to develop working relationships and alignment with our HR colleagues so that we can better focus health and wellbeing campaigns and ensure that the right information gets to the right people.

Harry Collins CMIOSH, health and safety manager, Shepherd Neame

I feel we are in a perfect storm: companies having to combat the hangover from COVID with regards to staffing issues and lost competence in their workforces; high energy

costs, meaning businesses will struggle to make pre-pandemic profits; employees’ and workers’ standards and expectations being raised with regards to wages, working conditions, benefits and working hours; and employers’ environmental, social and corporate governance standards being stretched due to corporate image. The workforce is changing rapidly, and new employees are expecting a good standard of safety, welfare and support in their working lives.

We need to fully implement the Brexit changes, stabilise the energy sector and focus on sustainability before making changes to health and safety legislation.

I hope OSH professionals can gain better recognition for the work we do. I have often said to many colleagues and associates that the work put into safety is complex – more behavioural and more challenging than ever before. The work we do does not sit high enough in the national image.

Carter CMIOSH, network health and safety manager, Marks & Spencer; committee member of the East Midlands IOSH branch

As a profession, we’re now more than familiar with reacting to an ever-changing landscape. When talking about risk, we need to continue to be agile in our

decision-making, to adapt and influence throughout all levels of our organisations. Listening and engaging have never been so important.

The revised and enhanced Blueprint launched in November has allowed members an opportunity to further self-reflect on individual behavioural development needs. This offers us all a brilliant platform and I’m excited to see this grow throughout 2023.

With so much uncertainty and change currently around us in our day-to-day lives, our organisations’ absolute commitment to health, safety and wellbeing must remain the constant through brilliant leadership that stretches beyond the technical, enabling us to react to whatever appears next on the horizon.

Hugh Maxwell

CFIOSH, head of safety, Leviat

I am seeing an increased focus on workplace health and safety, and wellness in particular. Revised home and hybrid working arrangements are becoming the norm and to make such work-related processes sustainable, I see greater engagement and interdependence on home safety and wellness, the like of which we have not seen before.

As a number of other areas to drive improvements took a back seat as businesses learned to cope with COVID, I see a realignment and revision of workplace priorities. I hope this will be supported by a review of legislation and further transition away from the influence of EU legislative arrangements. I think the important thing is that businesses use this revitalisation period as an opportunity to strengthen their safety and overall business performance – encouraging greater engagement and participation of all workers.

See more IOSH member predictions at ioshmagazine.com/predictions-2023

James

BLUEPRINT: NEW PLANS AND OPPORTUNITIES

Virman Man explains how IOSH’s new and enhanced tool, launched at the end of last year, will energise you as you take the next steps in your OSH journey in 2023.

New toolkit: at a glance

An all-in-one package for members, mapped to IOSH’s competency framework, consisting of:

A self-assessment tool to inform your personal development plan

A new suite of CPD resources to support your learning

A CPD record so you can track your progress

An Ethical Practice in OSH e-learning and assessment*.

The competency framework covers 69 technical, core and behavioural competencies. Members can access Blueprint at blueprint.iosh.com

*Mandatory for Chartered Members and Chartered Fellows.

See what Blueprint can do to support you in maintaining and developing your OSH skills and knowledge so you can be the best you can be in your role. Blueprint allows you control over what and when you learn, so you can progress at a pace that fits around your work and domestic commitments.

Your continuing professional development (CPD) will get a boost with Blueprint, which has been designed as an easy-to-use tool linked to IOSH’s competency framework. This is a set of 69 technical, core and behavioural competencies that are vital for good OSH professional practice. You must be able to demonstrate proficiency in a combination of these competencies at various levels. Depending on your specific

requirements, you can work to reach four levels in any given competency: understand, implement, lead and innovate. The IOSH professional journey provides a structure for your career progression.

Make a considered evaluation of your professional attributes by using Blueprint to carry out a self-assessment. This will help you to create a personal development plan that addresses gaps in your OSH knowledge.

Access to a library of specially produced CPD resources gives you the means to develop your proficiency in competencies that will support you in your work. And this will prepare you to become eligible to move up to the next IOSH membership grade.

IOSH chief executive Vanessa HarwoodWhitcher is proud of the development of the professional journey, an initiative she championed during her time as IOSH’s director of professional services: ‘It’s wonderful to see members taking advantage of these new opportunities for their continuing professional development. A key part of our WORK 2022 strategy was to enhance the profession by ensuring IOSH invested in new tools, resources and career pathways for members that would enhance their status and capability.

‘The beauty of Blueprint is that members have real control of their professional learning. They can decide when they do it and have an incredible choice of learning materials, all informed by IOSH’s competency framework.

‘As we introduce a new strategic development phase for IOSH, the professional journey represents a logical step forward for the OSH profession to ensure that it continues to be ready for

future challenges as the world of work continues to evolve.’

Make the most of the opportunities

Blueprint offers

Refresh and deepen your knowledge   Further extend your range of professional competencies

Consolidate your strengths

Develop new skills

Ensure you are grounded in good ethical practice

Improve your professional standing.

Enthusiastic adopters

People have been excited about their experience of using Blueprint. Here’s what they have to say about it:

‘I found Blueprint easy to navigate and well presented. The creation of an individual plan for progression was helpful. The experience offered more than just having to read pages of content, it was interactive with the case studies and Q&As presented.’

Sarah Dows CMIOSH

‘I think the views expressed in the ethics module are enlightened and realistic, and I am proud to be associated with an organisation that is specific and open about what it stands for.’

David Fagg CMIOSH

What’s next?

IOSH is about to launch its updated membership grades, which are set to shape the OSH profession for years to come. We’ll also be launching a self-serve personalised journey for you to upgrade your membership so that it reflects your level of professional competence.

To get ahead and be ready for this, complete your self-assessment now and start to upskill yourself. Check where your strengths lie and make full use of the resources IOSH has produced to fill the gaps in your OSH knowledge.

It could be the best thing you do for yourself and your career this year.

MENTORING

Peer-to-peer learning

To give your continuing professional development a real boost, sign up to the IOSH Mentoring scheme (iosh.com/mentoring) and gain valuable OSH insights from an experienced professional. On the other hand, consider being a mentor: you get the chance to share your knowledge and shape the future leaders in OSH. Improve your leadership, communication and coaching skills – and contribute to your own CPD. Everyone wins.

LEARNING

( UN ) COMMON SENSE

While it is a phrase familiar to many, for OSH professionals it is a fundamentally flawed concept. We explore why – and find out how to ensure evidence-based approaches are used.

WORDS ANNA SCOTT

‘J

ust use common sense’: a phrase often used in health and safety, usually said with the best intentions but without thinking it through, according to Kevin McCloskey CMIOSH, consultant and owner of Just Health and Safety. ‘What is this magical thing health and safety professionals seem to be blind to recommending?’ he adds.

Common sense is a term ‘mainly reserved for those looking on with 20:20 vision after an accident who want to feel superior’, Kevin says. Or they are in the process of ‘setting someone up to fail (for example by not providing the right equipment to do a job), and usually said as a throwaway comment’. In other words, common sense cannot be ‘pinned down or relied upon as a strategy to control risk’.

Psychologists, philosophers and other academics have sought to define common sense. Dr Peter Ellerton, senior lecturer in philosophy at the University of

Queensland in Australia, says common sense is something that everyone should be able to understand, even if it has to be explained first. ‘Usually when we talk about something being common sense, we mean that it is intuitively obvious (or at least obvious once someone points it out), logically consistent, an appropriate view to hold or position to take and grounded in experience,’ he adds.

But it is a flawed concept. ‘Very few people lament their own lack of common sense, but notice a lack of it around them,’ Peter adds, explaining that we often confuse something being intuitively obvious for something being true. ‘There are a lot of reasons for this, including our background assumptions, experiences and overall world views. What seems blindingly obvious to one person can seem incomprehensible to another. This explains why we can all be champions of common sense but end up disagreeing on a wide variety of subjects.’

In addition, the way ‘common sense’ translates

into different languages yields slightly different meanings. Carsten Busch, ‘safety mythologist’ and historian, explains that in English the phrase emphasises ‘common’, meaning behaviour perceived as rational within a large part of the population. In other languages, the phrase has a more nuanced meaning. ‘Expressions such as “gezond verstand” (Dutch) or “sunt fornuft” (Norwegian) translate rather into a “healthy sense” than “common sense”,’ he explains.

Psychologist Dr Jim Taylor says the idea that common sense is ‘sound judgement derived from experience rather than study is one of the most revered qualities’, but is ‘neither common nor sensible’.

‘The idea that if a belief is held by a large number of people it must be sound has been disproved time and time again,’ he says. The concept of common sense does not explain why people buy things they cannot afford, smoke cigarettes or eat junk food, Jim says, adding: ‘Perhaps the biggest problem with the common-sense argument is that it is invariably supported by anecdotal evidence.’

Folk psychology – the belief we can draw intuitive or common-sense conclusions about people’s behaviour, thoughts and feelings –has some accuracy but is often not correct. For

example, most people believe no one would confess to a crime they didn’t commit unless they were tortured, but extensive empirical research has shown that false confessions are surprisingly common and occur for a variety of reasons (Chiang et al, 2015).

Psychologists have theorised why many of our intuitive beliefs about human behaviour are wrong. For example, widely shared beliefs endorsed by ‘experts’ that make intuitive sense are assumed to be true. Confirmation bias – focusing on finding ‘evidence’ that our beliefs are true and ignoring cases that don’t confirm them – compounds this (Chiang et al, 2015).

CREATING BIAS

Relying on a common-sense approach to health and safety may have an impact on worker wellbeing and equity. Carsten Busch asks how appropriate common-sense assumptions are in our globalised, hyper-connected world with multicultural workplaces. ‘Can you really assume that, for example, immigrant workers or hired workers from eastern Europe share the same underlying knowledge, attitudes and values with us? They won’t share the same language or know what common sense means. They will however understand the judgmental tone in your voice. I think that parading common sense is a sneaky way of putting your own world view above that of others. That makes it quite toxic for equity, doesn’t it?’

Kevin Jones says the ‘comfort of common sense’ reinforces the status quo of slow progress in health and safety improvement and substantial trade-o s in pursuit of corporate and individual wealth.

‘We seem to be in a position where workers are complaining about poor mental health at the same time as sacrificing their mental health for career progression and job stability,’ he says. ‘OSH relies on workers refusing unsafe work, but what happens when workers are willing to su er? Workers should not be expected to su er. That is why the OSH laws emphasise the employer’s primary duty of care.

‘What the laws do not require and could not enforce is the employers’ duty of care. We need to convince employers that the duty to care for workers is equal or stronger than the employers’ desire for wealth.’

Common sense is less a guiding principle than an excuse for dismissing alternative interpretations

Managers should not assume teams are relying on common sense

To apply an example from OSH: common sense might say that if there hasn’t been an incident with a piece of equipment for the past 10 years, the hazard is negligible. But in fact the likelihood of impact has diminished, not disappeared (Vecchio-Sadus, 2010).

Reinforcing power relationships

In the OSH profession, common sense has not been and is not a guiding principle, according to IOSH head of policy Ruth Wilkinson. ‘Historically, the phrase “common sense” has been either linked with reports or general comments such as “keeping people safe at work is common sense”,’ she says.

‘Common sense is referred to within OSH training on interpreting risk perception across the workforce and structure of an organisation,’ Ruth says. ‘This is part of OSH practitioners developing their understanding that common sense is not a suitable control for any hazard in the workplace.’

But common sense can reinforce the power relationship and culture of those who use the phrase, according to Kevin Jones, editor of SafetyAtWorkBlog. ‘It’s less a guiding principle or working practice than an excuse for dismissing alternative interpretations or for considering perspectives that do not support the dominant economic purpose of the business or employer,’ he says. ‘I have heard common sense being used by a senior OSH person to establish a rapport with some workers and managers who are suspicious of health and safety disruption. But this short-term achievement reinforces the ineffectiveness of formal risk assessment processes.’

As a behavioural and leadership coach, Kevin Rogers CMIOSH, of consultancy Rogers Safety, runs exercises for people to reflect on their personal perception of risk. ‘It frequently shows that people’s perceptions are so wide and vary based on their past experiences, their general attitude, their demeanour and their character,’ he says. ‘Purely relying on common sense would see you with lots

of different outcomes.’ He sees different approaches in different sectors, too. For example, people working in the relatively newer, offshore wind sector use harnesses to climb vertical ladders and have fall arrest equipment, compared with people working on older oil and gas platforms who climb similar ladders without any fall arrest equipment. Both would believe their methods to be common sense.

‘I think it’s wrong to totally dismiss it when someone says, “We rely on common sense” because if they have competency and experience in a field, it’s more than likely – providing they haven’t become complacent and tuned out the risk – that their version of common sense in this

instance will keep them in a good place,’ says Kevin. He also sees different attitudes to common sense in OSH across SMEs and big companies. ‘In some of the larger companies, you can get headstrong and egotistical people who want to introduce what they believe is right for no good reason other than they believe it to be right,’ he says. ‘In some smaller companies I’ve often found managers know their teams better and rely on them to know how to operate.’

If managers don’t know their teams or what their perception of risk is, and are assuming they are relying on their common sense, the repercussions could be very serious, Kevin adds. ‘Reliance on any one individual, regardless of their role, is

LEGISLATION

The case for simplification?

Common sense is a phrase beloved of politicians – see UK home secretary Suella Braverman’s call for a return to ‘commonsense policing’ (Home Office, 2022) – and is often used as an argument for deregulation in health and safety.

Common sense, common safety was the title of Lord Young’s 2010 review into ‘the operation of health and safety laws and the growth of the compensation culture’. When the government published two reports in response three years later, it

released a statement titled, ‘Common sense restored to health and safety’ (Department of Work and Pensions, 2013). ‘A commonsense approach to simplifying legislation, or removing unnecessary bureaucracy to make compliance easier is a good approach,’ says Ruth Wilkinson.

She cites the example of changes to the UK’s RIDDOR (Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations) in 2012 – requiring incidents resulting in incapacitation to be reported over seven days instead of over

three days – being perceived in the main as bene fi cial (GB Health and Safety Executive, 2013).

However, she adds: ‘What we don’t want are the real risks being missed. Where common sense approaches to health and safety are applied, there is no guarantee suitable and su ffi cient controls for hazards will have been identi fi ed or implemented, and it’s fair to say they probably will not be su ffi cient. This includes suitable and appropriate training, measurement of competency or levels of supervision required.’

dangerous.’ Relying on common sense would not, for example, provide a legal defence in the event of an accident.

Wisdom vs common sense

In the OSH world, context and experience have great significance, Peter points out, citing the example of marine navigation and established boating protocols that are often ignored by novices in favour of a ‘common-sense’ approach. ‘This established knowledge is very hardwon and represents the cumulative experiences of generations of boaties,’ he says. ‘What we see in this example is the difference between common sense and wisdom. The former can be cheap, easy and accessible, while the latter takes time and hard work.’

However, he adds: ‘Just because “we’ve always done it this way” doesn’t mean it is the most sensible way to do things, particularly when times or circumstances change and the old ways are no longer the best ways. Habit, tradition and mental heuristics might be very useful to work quickly and productively, but they can get in the way when the conditions that formed them change.’

Moving beyond common sense

The problem with assuming a shared wisdom in OSH, Kevin McCloskey says, is that ‘crowds’ aren’t necessarily wise, consistent or interested in detail. ‘This is why we have a two-pronged legal system which can, over time, set carefully considered standards in order to minimise harm to the vast majority of workers, and provide compensation to those who are disadvantaged through poor working arrangements.

‘On the statutory law side, the duty to risk-assess places the responsibility where it should be – on those who are in charge. For employers who have “vicarious liability” for the actions of their employees it would unforgivable, indeed risky to the business, to try to rely on a populist catchphrase to manage their affairs.’

TOP TIPS

How to think outside the commonsense box

Review risk assessments and procedures, checking forreferences to common sense and replace with a definition of the competence and knowledge required, how this will be achieved and what level of supervision is required until the knowledge is demonstrated.

Ensure that there are no assumptions of shared worker wisdom within the organisation and workforce.

Support the development and delivery of appropriate OSH competency throughout theorganisation.

Ensure your individual competency is maintained via IOSH membership/Blueprint and the IOSH competency framework.

Wilkinson, head of health and safety (policy and operations), IOSH

There is much OSH professionals can do to ensure evidence-based approaches are used, Carsten says. ‘Good OSH relies on transdisciplinary approaches so we need to develop within our discipline, and we also need other disciplines.’

Professionals shouldn’t be tempted to apply overly simple solutions that ignore essential elements of the systems they are working in, he explains. ‘Common sense is often invoked to simplify a complex world by reducing complex situations to the behaviour of a person. That is a normal reaction, but not a very useful one, and one that may have negative effects,’ he adds. ‘And ask critical questions. Often, we don’t need more answers but better questions, such as “Why did it make sense for that person?”’

Communication skills, persistence and openness to new ideas and changing one’s mind are also crucial personal skills when dealing with colleagues, Kevin explains. ‘Health and safety professionals are often in positions of giving advice, rather than owning the tasks where risk assessment and reduction is needed,’ he adds. ‘Each professional develops their own set of tools and techniques that can be brought to bear.’

Peter says that perhaps the best common-sense approach is to ‘realise that we may not know the best way to do something and to seek the advice of those who have been doing it for a while’. For colleagues working with health and safety professionals who have built up risk perception over time through the work they do and training they have undertaken, this is crucial.

As Jim Taylor concludes: ‘We need to jettison this notion of the sanctity of common sense and instead embrace “reasoned sense” – that is, sound judgement based on rigorous study of an issue.’

To see references for this article, visit ioshmagazine.com/common-sense

Ruth

A New Year’s resolution that’s really going to stick

Get my Professional Development Plan sorted Build on my knowledge and skills Track my CPD progress more efficiently Put professional ethics at the heart of all I do Maintain my technical, core and behavioural competencies

If you’re not already using the new and enhanced Blueprint, check your inbox for a message from blueprint@iosh.com, which will contain your login details.

If you’ve not read it yet, checkout our Blueprint article on page 26.

WORDS ALEX LLOYD

Where once there was a straightforward split between the employed and self-employed, today’s labour market is much more complex.

The UK’s ‘gig economy’ workforce is now estimated at 7.25 million people (Fennell, 2022). The global figure is expected to hit 73 million in 2023 (Mastercard, 2020).One study found 18% of HR directors in the UK think three-quarters of their workforce will be gig workers in the next five years (Fennell, 2022).

Non-standard work had always been more common in developing countries but is growing rapidly in industrialised nations, as well as infiltrating sectors traditionally associated with standard jobs, such as office work (International Labour Organization (ILO), 2016). In the UK and EU, non-standard workers have a legal right to the same health and safety protection as permanent staff, but the picture varies

globally. ‘Whatever way people work for your organisation, you have an equal duty of care towards them, not just legally but ethically too,’ says Angela Gray, senior OSH specialist for IOSH. ‘If that is how you are managing your labour strategy, you have a responsibility to have a policy nailed down on how you are going to keep them safe.’

This should apply across the board, from SMEs to large corporate organisations – whether casual staff represent a small portion of the workforce or most of it.

Who’s the boss?

Casual workers come in many guises, taking in temporary, agency and zero-hours staff. But they are all defined as workers under UK law, providing they do not subcontract their tasks or are engaged through a limited company, with a right to work without detriment. The status of gig workers who operate via a gig platform, such as Uber or TaskRabbit, is a greyer area, as they are short-term flexible workers paid on completion of tasks.

The law around the world is evolving to define them, albeit slowly, with the Supreme Court of England and Wales ruling in February 2021 that Uber drivers

MENTAL HEALTH

Non-standard workers: the psychosocial risks revealed

Job and income insecurity due to the temporary and shortterm nature of gig work can lead to added psychosocial risks and stress for workers, says the ILO specialist. ‘Common reasons for workplace stress among appbased taxi and delivery workers include uncertainty of finding su cient services, long working shifts, pressure to drive quickly and risk of work-related injury and violence,’ says AnaCatalina Ramírez(pictured).

‘Fearing loss of future work opportunities, workers may be discouraged from speaking up about OSH concerns. Workers on web-based platforms do both paid and unpaid hours of work, which increases the hours spent in the job and lead to a lack of work/life balance or di culty disconnecting.’

As gig working becomes more commonplace, how can OSH professionals ensure that safety standards are maintained for every worker in their care?

PHOTOGRAPHY: ISTOCK

should have worker status, thanks to sustained lobbying by the GMB, a UK general trade union. The European Commission has also proposed new measures to improve working conditions for platform workers, which have a 2025 deadline to become law (EU, 2021).

Guidance from the GB Health and Safety Executive (HSE) confirms that businesses should treat gig economy workers no differently to others, while in April 2022, PPE regulations were amended to place a duty on every employer in Great Britain to provide suitable PPE to all limb (b) workers – those who have a casual employment relationship and work under a contract for service – free of charge. Previously it was only required for limb (a) employees (those with a contract of employment) (HSE, 2022).

Price of freedom

There is strong evidence that gig platform workers have a poorer work/life balance than permanent employees, not least because of the precarious nature of their income. In addition, almost half of this group are taking on tasks to supplement the income from a full-time job (Fennell, 2022), leaving them vulnerable to fatigue and burnout.

When the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work analysed 93 studies into the link between non-standard employment and negative impact on health and safety, 76 found it was associated with a deterioration in terms of injury rates, disease risk, hazard exposures or worker and manager knowledge (EU-OSHA, 2021).

While gig work is varied, much of it still centres on lone workers operating in vulnerable, unregulated settings, with one survey revealing 42% of drivers and riders had suffered damage to their vehicle due to a collision while working (UCL, 2018).

It makes for a perfect storm of high risk and high pressure. ‘Work in the platform economy often includes groups of workers that are already particularly vulnerable to OSH risks, such as migrant workers, young workers and women,’ says Ana Catalina Ramírez, OSH specialist for the ILO. ‘Migrant workers may face increased job insecurity, resulting in them being

discouraged from reporting incidents to their employer, as well as barriers to accessing healthcare or other services in the event of an accident or injury.’

Talk the talk

New methods of working need new solutions if OSH professionals are to mitigate and prevent the hazards. ‘[Nonstandard workers] can be harder to engage than traditional employees,’ says Angela. ‘You might not even meet them, and it’s not as easy to fulfil your duties. It’s difficult to rely on written information, emails and video links, and to be sure that these workers will read, understand or use it.’

Communicating to casuals that the process is for their benefit – and

demonstrates their value to the business – will also reap rewards. ‘Let them know this is not just a tick-box exercise,’ says Angela. ‘There needs to be clear signposting to their points of contact to report problems, both a normal channel and a whistleblowing route.’

This will also help to mitigate the risk of casual staff disrupting your existing safety regime. ‘Having a good safety culture in place will ensure permanent staff feel empowered to challenge errors and support their casual colleagues to work safely,’ says Angela.

Steve Garelick, GMB officer for transport and logistics, emphasises that OSH professionals need to educate upwards. ‘The people running some gig platforms have very little understanding of health and safety dynamic risk assessments,’ he says. ‘They are not looking at the bigger picture. If you are going to operate a business and expect individuals to serve that business, you have a duty of care to their safety and their security of wealth. It comes down to being ethical and doing the right thing.’

To view references for this article, see ioshmagazine.com/gig-workers

CASE STUDY

Deliveroo

Founded in London in 2013, Deliveroo operates a hyperlocal three-sided digital marketplace, connecting consumers, restaurants and grocers, and riders.

It operates in 11 markets worldwide, with 110,000 selfemployedriders.

Deliveroo provides free personal accident and third-party liability insurance to every rider,

along with earning support for sickness and a new child payment. The policy covers them up to an hour after they finish their shift, but car and scooter users need to buy their own vehicle insurance, including cover for food delivery.

There is a live rider support team to advise on topics from payments to safety.

Key kit has minimal safety requirements, although riders are required to buy it. They are provided with information on cleaning and maintaining these items.

In September 2022, Deliveroo UK created a voluntary partnership with the GMB union to discuss pay and consult on health and safety, benefits and inclusion.

New methods of working need new solutions if we are to mitigate and prevent hazards

Singapore has worked hard to improve workplace safety and health (WSH) standards, with legislation, a national strategy, enforcement, education and ambitious goals.

The current target is to cut the workplace fatality rate to less than one per 100,000 workers by 2028, bringing it in line with that of the safest countries in the world. Sustained efforts have seen that key metric fall from 4.9 in 2004 (Ministry of Manpower (MOM), 2010) to 1.1 in 2021 (MOM, 2022a).

Yet in 2022, despite a decline in the number of both major and minor injuries (MOM, 2022b), there has been a worrying rise in the number of workplace deaths. As of 12 October 2022, when IOSH spoke to Singapore’s MOM, the government ministry for workforce policies, they numbered 39, compared with 37 for the whole of 2021 (MOM, 2022c).

Behind the figures

The most common hypothesis is that ‘as Singapore’s economy opened up post-

COVID and economic activity has picked up significantly, people have been rushing and rusty,’ says Silas Sng, commissioner for workplace safety and health divisional director, OSH division, MOM.

He says: ‘I have spoken to several contractors on the building and construction side, which has been the biggest contributor to fatalities and injuries. They have a double whammy situation where they are rushing to complete delayed projects at the same time as coming to grips with new projects

SINGAPORE: BACK TO SAFETY

After years of steady decline, workplace fatalities in the country rose significantly in 2021-22. We explore the potential causes and the action being taken.

WORDS JULIETTE ASTRUP

they’ve taken on. ‘The rusty part – and this is more hypothetical – is that employees have not been working for a period of time.’

Nurul Asshekin, chair of IOSH Singapore branch, says she is very concerned by the rise in workplace deaths, especially as ‘Singapore has grown from strength to strength in terms of how we are managing the workforce, especially in the construction industry.’ She suggests it may ‘either emphasise the lack of leadership and commitment towards a safe working environment, or a severe push and demands to workers for productivity at the expense of the workers’ safety’.

She adds: ‘Working in the training and education industry, we see that funds for non-legally mandated training have unfortunately been one of the first expenses that most companies are cutting, and this impacts competence and how current their employees are in keeping themselves abreast with the right knowledge.’

Taking action

Responding to the worrying trend, on 1 September the MOM announced a six-month period of ‘heightened safety’, introducing unprecedented measures such as the mandatory ‘safety time-out’ and the

upfront debarment of companies from hiring migrant workers if, following an accident, serious WSH lapses are uncovered.

Chief executive officers of errant companies may now be required to personally account to the MOM and take responsibility for rectifications, or engage external auditors to conduct a thorough review of their WSH processes.

In addition, all companies in higher risk sectors were required to conduct a time-out during September to review safety procedures.

The MOM also announced strengthened support for SMEs, with the expansion of its StartSAFE programme that gives businesses access to WSH consultants, paid for by the MOM, to help identify

risks and implement good practices. As of 1 October, targeted measures for the construction sector were also brought in, including lowering the threshold for issuing demerit points for workplace safety breaches, with those exceeding the penalty thresholds being debarred from hiring foreign employees for up to two years.

A new harmonised set of disqualification criteria introduced across all public sector construction tenders also means contractors with poor WSH performance can be temporarily disqualified from participating.

Reactions and results

The MOM’s intervention has been welcomed by Nurul, who sees the rise in fatalities as ‘a culture issue that cannot be quickly corrected without adequate intervention’.

She adds: ‘It forces companies to take a step back and reflect. Some would do it with good intent and understanding of the purpose, but some companies just tick the box.’

While it is still very early days, there are positive signs, with the preliminary stats

Safety and health start at the top, and if there is zero tolerance from the top, that percolates down

PHOTOGRAPHY: GETTY

for accidents and fatalities for September having come down. ‘The voices I’m hearing from industry show the desire to comply,’ says Silas. ‘Everyone acknowledges that recovery and economic growth is one thing – but it should not be at the cost of killing workers.’

Inspection and enforcement Inspection and enforcement activities have also been stepped up, with more than 3500 inspections in the higher-risk sectors between January and June 2022 – 35% more than the same period last year.

The MOM took enforcement action over more than 9000 breaches under the WSH Act and Regulations and issued more than 50 stop work orders (SWOs) in the first six months of the year, a two-fold increase compared with the same period last year.

This level of intensity is set to continue, with a strong focus on Singapore’s construction industry in particular. The MOM has issued 63 SWOs to construction sites between January 2022 and midSeptember 2022. These include an SWO and S$15,000 (£9180) fine imposed on Wah Khiaw Developments Pte Ltd on 11 August 2022, where the MOM found multiple unsafe practices – including working at height without barricades or fall arrest systems, unsafe formworks, and unsafe means of access.

Meanwhile, a fatal accident on 25 August involving a lorry driver who was run over by a forklift while he was securing it onto a lorry for transportation prompted an SWO at Synergy-Biz Pte Ltd, after a MOM inspection the following day found multiple unsafe conditions. A S$6000 (£3670) composition fine was issued.

What’s next?

Going forward, a key lever will be the new Approved Code of Practice [CoP] on Chief Executives’ and Board of Directors’ WSH duties, launched by the minister for manpower Dr Tan See Leng in September, and aimed at ‘integrating WSH into organisational processes and establishing clear responsibilities of company directors and CEOs’ (MOM, 2022d).

How to promote a strong health and safety culture

Action for OSH professionals

Establish open reporting of incidents, near misses and concerns, coupled with the concept of fair culture. Explore what senior managers and workers believe about health and safety practices within the workplace. Find out what is expected of the workers in terms of health and safety values, beliefs, attitudes and practices. Consider prevention strategies and interventions to address any differences between expectations and reality in the organisation’s OSH culture. Ensure good risk management and OSH management and acknowledge that measurable and permanent change in the OSH culture will take time.

and the wider network, to see how we can tap into that,’ Silas explains. ‘We don’t have the monopoly on what is the best way to improve the situation, and certainly, whoever has good ideas that we can implement, we will shamelessly take those on if they can save life and limb.’

Broader lessons

The apparent backslide in safety practices in Singapore demonstrates the need for constant vigilance around OSH, as well as the importance of strong data in identifying red flags and empowering action.

Hopes are high that the steps already being taken will be enough to see the rise in workplace fatalities reversed and Singapore resume progress towards its vision of being one of the safest places in the world to work.

But the situation also offers a reminder for all OSH professionals, wherever they live, of the potential for safety cultures to slip, especially during times of heightened pressure.

Ruth Wilkinson, IOSH head of health and safety (policy and operations), says: ‘It’s important to note that we don’t know what the cause is in relation to Singapore. However, we know that poor safety cultures exist when employees demonstrate unsafe behaviours, the organisation’s attitude and values are not aligned to safety and safe working, there is poor training, poor communication, poor supervision, poorly designed equipment or operations and working conditions, and so on.’

Silas adds: ‘The CoP is not equivalent to law in matters of prosecution, but a court can make reference to it in deciding whether a CEO has taken all reasonable and practical measures – the yardstick of those measures is the CoP.

‘We believe that safety and health start at the top, and if there is zero tolerance from the top, that percolates down.’

In addition, as announced by the MOM on 1 September, a new multisectoral task force will continue to work to strengthen safety practices and outcomes. ‘We will look to IOSH, linking with the local chapter

Reasons for a decline in standards are, therefore, multifaceted, from leadership and training to competency and a culture of tolerating poor and unsafe practices.

She adds: ‘It’s not enough to provide safe equipment, systems and procedures if the culture doesn’t encourage safe and healthy working. OSH professionals must aim to apply current thinking in a practical, realistic way to achieve safe and healthier working environments and practices.’

To see references for this article, visit ioshmagazine.com/singapore-fatalities

Better solutions Better solutions

How to... be a problem-solver

We find out what soft skills are needed to overcome – or prevent – OSH issues in the workplace.

WORDS HELEN BIRD

Problem-solving is a skill needed by OSH professionals at all stages of their careers. We asked experienced OSH manager and industrial hygienist Dr Steve Cowley CMIOSH (pictured), of engineering and health and safety risk management company Finch Consulting, for his advice on how to do it well.

What kind of problems are OSH professionals likely to face?

We are problem-solving all the time: our role is to try to prevent health and safety problems or to mitigate those that exist. We’re generally trying to sell a message to people about how things

should be designed and run, so that risk is minimised. And the hierarchy of controls [a way of determining what actions will best control exposures] that we use as a framework is almost a problem-solving list in itself.

In what situations can problem-solving be effective?

I’m currently looking at a problem that’s been created by designing a process around the product, and the processing of that product – and then the person has been brought into the picture to interact with the process and equipment. And that’s too late: we

want these problem-solving activities upstream in the design process. We should stop and think about how human input will work safely with what we’re trying to achieve equipment and process-wise. So, we’re now having to problem-solve, but the solution is going to be a compromise.

How do you approach problem-solving?

We begin with gathering information. The type of information we often need includes: What that problem is: how it has arisen, the scale of the problem, whether it is technical

or organisational, and whether it is simple or multifaceted.

What the nature of the problem is: is there a risk to people, the organisation or the environment?

The risk of exposure: is the risk acute – requiring immediate intervention and short-term solutions – or do we have the luxury of time?

The stakeholders: what are their interests and are there competing interests? What is the organisation trying to achieve? Is there support where it’s needed and time and cash in the budget to solve the problem? Is there an appetite for the best solution?

What soft skills do you need to be a good problem-solver? Open-mindedness, listening and creative thinking skills. Problem-solving tools are obviously helpful, but the choice of tool will be determined by the scale and nature of the problem.

My colleague Dr John Culvenor experimented successfully with physician and psychologist Edward de Bono’s ‘Six Thinking Hats’ methodology in team-based problem-solving. The hierarchy of controls is a great foundation for creative thinking that all health and safety professionals are using because we’re constantly looking

for ways to achieve those higher-order outcomes. We also need to be consulting with all the stakeholders – so it’s an open, communicative, creative and consultative approach. Consultation is more than communication.

Which elements of the IOSH competency framework are used?

To an extent, all of them. In the technical category we’re looking at health and safety law – or compliance – and risk management. Of the core competencies we’re trying to provide leadership, and planning is where we’re trying to get upstream and get the problem solved at design stage.

And then in the behavioural category we’re managing stakeholders, we’re communicating and working with others. So problem-solving fits into a large part of the framework.

How do you ensure that problems are identified before they arise?

We must look for opportunities for the organisation to learn, and prevent repeats of the mistakes that have led to past problems.

Ideally, the OSH professional is consulted at the concept and design stages. All stakeholders must be identified and consulted. Users and maintenance staff, for example, usually have rich experience and ideas that are of value to process and equipment designs.

Assessing processes from end to end, and considering machinery and equipment lifecycles, identifying the stakeholders at every stage and engaging them in such group exercises is always fruitful. Consultation is vital for identifying and ironing out as many problems as possible before money is spent.

Read more about Six Thinking Hats in a safety context at safetydifferently.com/ six-thinking-hats-for-safety

Clearer view

Liz Jackson MBE is sales and marketing director and co-owner of corporate finance advisers BCMS.

Having lost her eyesight at 26, she believes problem-solving is innate in people with disabilities. Here, she describes what this means and how she applies it in the workplace.

I was born with a baseline condition, which meant I had tunnel vision and night blindness, so I grew up needing to navigate the world differently. And much of that is in problem-solving.

I was in a school production once where I had to walk through the audience from the back of the hall to the front in the dark. I made it so that my character had a wand, and I tapped the chairs as I went to get away with it.

When problem-solving at work, I tend to follow a process. What’s the reality of the situation we’re in? Then we collect all the data to understand it fully. What are my options? I’ll start to make a list and I’ll pick the top three things that I think will have the biggest impact on me and navigating that problem or solution. And then I’ll make a list of what I’ll do – and get it in the diary.

I use lots of coaching techniques when problem-solving, including GROW [goal, reality, options, will]. I can navigate that process probably in five minutes now. It’s a thinking strategy for me that stops me from apping or feeling panicky.

Havsco developed the first personal Hand Arm Vibration dosimeter, which measures and records the actual vibration exposure at the point where the vibrations enter the hand, when using power tools. No reliance on inconsistent data, irrespective of which tools are used, how they are used or what they are used for, the HAVSense dosimeter measures real exposure with no programming or changing data when swapping between tools. No guesswork, calculations or time recording, just simple HAV exposure measurements.

Measure personal exposure from tools, tasks, processes or even products, empowering you with real exposure data entirely to suit your operations and requirements.

Contact us for a free, no obligation demonstration at your location.

The search for safety

HACKS

WORDS MATT LAMY

In 2019, the Port of Tyne set itself the target of ‘zero harm’ and is developing a safety culture among its 330 employees to eradicate injuries. And a recent initiative, a Smart Safety Hackathon – which brought together teams from industry and universities to compete to find data safety solutions – has brought that goal nearer.

As 95% of the UK’s imports and exports are handled by the maritime sector, British ports are a hive of activity – and of risk, with a massive number of vehicle movements, heavy plant operations and the specific safety challenges presented by maritime work (Department for International Trade, 2022).

The Port of Tyne, near Newcastle on the River Tyne, is one of the UK’s major deep-sea ports. It accepts 83% of the world’s largest container ships, with operations including bulk and conventional cargo, ferry, cruises, and car terminals (North East Local

Enterprise Partnership, 2022). The Nissan car plant at Sunderland is a major partner, exporting its vehicles for the European and global markets through the port, while its other business interests include logistics, estates and renewable energy operations – offshore energy firm Equinor has selected the port as its maintenance and operations base for the Dogger Bank wind farm.

The zero-harm initiative is paying off. The port recently worked for 15 months without reportable injury – its best performance in a decade.

In response to Maritime 2050 – the UK government’s vision for the British maritime industry – the Port of Tyne’s health, safety, environment, and quality (HSEQ) team, led by Jen Maddison, is also introducing AIbased predictive safety management software. It’s an exciting project, and one that will be significantly influenced by the work of teams that took part in last summer’s hackathon.

The Port of Tyne recently worked for 15 months without a reportable injury

A ‘hackathon’ to develop better safety management software using AI has helped the Port of Tyne move towards its ambition of achieving zero harm.

The project

‘The port industry has a challenge when it comes to safety,’ Jen says. ‘There are fatalities, and every one of those is a tragedy, not just to families and friends but to colleagues, employers and theindustry.’

After 15 months without a reportable incident, the port has also received a RoSPA gold award for nine years running. The reason for such success is its commitment to being at the forefront of safety. For example, in 2019 the government released its Maritime 2050

strategy, which set out the requirement to establish a crosssector innovation hub at a UK port by 2030. The port had the hub up and running on its site within six months.

The 2050 Innovation Hub is a partnership between, among others, Nissan, the Department for Transport, and power supplier Drax, which imports and stores wood pellets through the port. ‘The hub is a space for people to collaborate and develop technical solutions for challenges, not just in the maritime

industry,’ Jen says.

‘We also use it to run our own technology projects, including the development of our next safety management software, for which we’ve run several sprints and hackathons, including the most recent hackathon in June (Port of Tyne,2022).

‘We have an online safety management system (SMS) that we use to report incidents and store risk assessments, but it’s not slick enough and feels out of date, so we need something better.’

Objectives

While scoping the new SMS, Jen’s HSEQ team consulted with colleagues from all business areas to examine what they wanted from the system. The key point is that everyone at the port must be able to easily access the system to report an unsafe act, an unsafe condition, an injury, or an incident of damage.

‘Then we thought about what would help us to achieve zero harm and what things do we need? What did we like about the existing system and what did we think it could do better? We’ve come up with a comprehensive scope because we have had everybody involved – it’s not just what we want from a safety perspective.

‘We want a system that is more forward-looking, and which uses AI and data to predict and identify trends, so that we can get ahead of the curve. We need a system that is easy for the port to use now but which also gives us benefits for the next 10 or 15 years,’ Jen says.

‘With the Smart Safety Hackathon, we wanted to see what was possible and we wanted to push the boundaries to find out what AI can do to help us improve. We wanted to see what systems can do now, and what they might be able to do even further in the future.

STUDY

Execution

The Port of Tyne works closely with Newcastle University and the National Innovation Centre for Data (NICD), based at the university’s campus. NICD was instrumental in running the hackathon, developing the specification, scope and hosting the event.

Six teams took part: three from universities – Northumbria, Durham and Newcastle – and three from industry –Siemens, Bulien and Signal Intelligence. All were made up of data scientists or specialists in related fields. Over two days, they were tasked with seeing how applying technology to the port’s data could be used to provide enhanced understanding and risk prediction.

‘We gave them all our incident data from 2018 to 2022. That meant, if it was something like a near miss, they had the time and the date that it occurred,’ Jen says.

‘We also have a free text box within our reporting system, so people can write a description of what happened.

‘The main question for the teams was: “Given data about incidents – such as the type of operation, the type of cargo, the weather, the time of day, the times of darkness, tide heights – is it possible to predict if an incident is likely to happen?”’

Results

The winning team from Newcastle University – who received a trophy and £2000 in prize money – produced a solution that went further than their rivals.

SAFETY FIRST

New ways of thinking

Jen Maddison, head of HSEQ at the Port of Tyne, explains why data and technology is so crucial.

‘Safety is the port’s number one priority, and it is supported by our company values: open, excellent, respectful and responsible. Our biggest challenges now are developing our safety culture and datagathering – looking for leading indicators that we can use to identify a trend or a problem before it becomes an incident, and that was the key reason for the hackathon.

‘It’s important to access expertise outside the industry. We are continually making connections with industries such as offshore wind, oil and gas, transport sectors and the construction industry. We’re asking: how do you do safety? How have you improved your safety performance and safety culture?

‘In the case of the hackathon, I was

First, by using natural language processing (NLP) to analyse the free text boxes, they were able to pull out keywords or phrases – such as ‘fire’, or ‘slips and trips’ – and then make heat maps of the port that showed where most of those types of injuries occurred.

‘For example, we could bring up a Google Map image of the port showing where the fire hotspots were. That was so visual, and it was effectively in real time because as more incidents were reported, those hotspots would change,’ Jen says. The winning team’s second step was to use NLP to analyse

astonished by the way that data scientists thought about the issues and the possibilities they came up with. To have crunched through such an amount of data and to come away with some usable systems was incredible. If that’s what they can set up in two days, what could they do in six months? And what can we look forward to in two, five or even 10years?’

information from incidents and make it more concise.

Jen says: ‘It could recognise berth names or ship names and their prefixes such as TS or MV, even if they weren’t in capitals.

‘Then the team developed a chatbot, and we could ask it, “What could the consequences of this incident have been? ” The chatbot would summarise everything and give us an answer.’

Jen believes this capability could help with lower-level risks. The chatbot system could be used to identify trends and flag up lowerlevel reporting that is consistently occurring.

Students from the winning team – Muzaffer Şenkal and Melike Bektaş, both from Turkey – remotely joined a board meeting to demonstrate their solutions.

Source: Port of Tyne, 2021

‘We’re now focusing on getting our new safety management software right. We should have that online next year,’ Jen says. ‘We’re definitely going to use the hackathon forum again.’

To view the references, visit ioshmagazine.com/port-tyne

ON THE ROPES

In our last article, we discussed Sir Edmund Hillary’s ascent of Everest, which forms a powerful metaphor for many workplace activities. Jon Krakauer (2011) also writes about a mistake made by Adventure Consultants’ expedition leader, Rob Hall, during an ascent of Everest in 1996, that led to his death and the deaths of a fellow guide and two clients.

Hall’s party was not the only one attempting to summit during

favourable spring weather. Four days before Hall’s ascent, after watching another party return without summitting, Hall told Krakauer: ‘To turn around that close to the summit… that showed incredibly good judgement on young Göran’s [Kropp] part. I’m impressed – considerably more impressed, actually, than if he’d continued climbing and made the top.’

To a health and safety professional, Kropp had risk-assessed the hazards,

considered the likelihood and the foreseeability, and had ‘stopped work’ before his actions became reckless.

Before the climb, Hall had reiterated to climbers the importance of obeying his orders on summit day: ‘I will tolerate no discussion up there… my word will be absolute law.’

e time’ for the p was 2pm – the

On the morning of the fatal ascent, Hall had told the climbing party this ‘turnaround time’ for the

In part two of their article on ROPE theory, Paul Verrico cmiosh and Sarah Valentine explore Planning and Empowerment.

SAFETY THEORY

CASE STUDY

A failure to plan leads to a fatality

Our client was a very large transport firm, which frequently undertook road resurfacing during which there were lane closures. Heras wire mesh fencing was used to separate people from moving vehicles, marshals would walk the length of excavations, and residents were guided into driveways by a lead vehicle.

Where inner-city works took place, the characteristics of the neighbourhoods required careful thought to identify hazards and control risks, such as petrol stations, hospitals or nurseries. Each section of road presented unique issues.

At one project’s inception, a dedicated tra c planner was tasked to identify the needs of the neighbourhood and create a detailed plan. As the months went

on, the tra c planner became overloaded – he was expected to produce drawings and risk assessments at short notice. Standards started to slip and risk assessment was delegated to site managers. The managers began confidently, faithfully following the process. But as time went by, those risk processes began to be applied superficially. Assessments for sites a mile away were cut and pasted into a new document with a different street heading.

The devastating consequences of those decisions came to fruition when works ran alongside a care home. An elderly dementia patient was unable to decipher the tra c route and stepped into tra c. His death exposed the deficiencies in the system and the company received a significant fine.

turnaround time being the point at which every member of the team, regardless of where they are on the mountain, must begin the descent. There were delays en route; some ropes were not in position and the lead climbers were delayed. Hall failed to stick to the agreed plan, which was calculated (or risk-assessed) to consider the weather, daylight, temperature and fatigue.

He changed the risk mitigations. It was, in fact, after 4pm when the last of Hall’s group successfully reached the summit and, by then, external events, including a storm and plummeting temperatures meant the initial mitigations were hopelessly overwhelmed. The climbing party had difficulty communicating and staying on the agreed route and were overcome with exhaustion. The results were catastrophic.

Planning – the P in ROPE

Planning is one of the fundamentals of modern life, which we all practise to some

extent. Yet the Planning extolled in ROPE theory goes beyond setting policies. As was seen with Hall’s fatal mistake, thought must be given to considering ‘what if’ scenarios when conditions or factors change in a dynamic setting. Kahneman et al (2021) describe how groups amplify noise. If groups learn the views of component members, social influences diminish diversity without diminishing the collective error. For many decisions, there are clouds of possibilities, only one of which is realised.

Attending to the judgements of others can cause a bias towards the first mover. The order in which cues about a developing situation come about and their relative persuasiveness may have far more impact on workers at the sharp end than on those planning at the blunt end.

When we investigate incidents, it is important to realise people act rationally at the point of decision-making because there are strong initial cues that suggest

the situation is under control and can be continued without changing the likelihood of misfortune. If things change slowly, people fail to respond in a timely way, becoming situationally blind.

Conklin (2017) notes ‘prevention efforts can’t prevent causes that were not expected, just as planning can’t plan for unexpected events. We are so invested in preventing all accidents we don’t build the ability for our systems to recover if the accident happened. We investigate to determine how we failed to prevent the bad thing from happening.’

It is essential that proper monitoring is conducted to provide assurances the work envisaged is an accurate representation of how it is performed. It is important that this monitoring exercise is not viewed as satisfying numerical metrics but as a way to properly feed back on the way the work is being completed against the work planned.

Planning in ROPE theory is about considering the skills workers will need

in a dynamic environment. It is about considering the metrics and data that need to be gathered to become a learning organisation, and understanding where measures succeed in stopping fatal outcomes and what recoveries are possible in a mature system.

about t

Ensuring the right people are engaged in the planning process is crucial. People who are not competent in the full lifecycle of the activity can create oversights that are not corrected when completing the planning process. Additionally, engagement with the workforce is essential to understand the requirements of the work being performed to identify demands on planning, such as time estimates, local conditions, equipment availability and so on. Reactive planning will expose employees to risk. Proactive management of work activities will remove these risks and enable the work to be completed as imagined.

Empowerment – the E in ROPE

Allied to stress management is the final ROPE element: Empowerment. Krakauer explains that, as he began his descent, he noticed wispy clouds forming around other Himalayan peaks but thought nothing of it. A fellow climber who was a pilot by trade later told Krakauer that, in his experience, wispy clouds are sometimes the ‘crowns of robust thunderheads’.

Yet that life-saving information was never passed to guide leaders. It had been explained in the pre-ascent briefing to the guided party that Hall did not wish to hear dissenting views while the expedition made the final push to the summit. Krakauer felt detached from the other climbers – they were linked only by circumstance, not by commitment, trust or loyalty.

If Planning involves ensuring that workers have the ability ‘to be able to do work in a varying and unpredictable world’ (Conklin, 2017) or ‘having the capacity to

‘What if’ scenarios must be considered when plans change

make things go well’ (Hollnagel, 2014) then Empowerment is about giving local teams the ability to speak up and act in accordance with their training, rather than sticking by rote to policies that were made off-site for work as an imagined task rather than for work as done.

The role of a leader is to create an empowered workforce that feels able to voice issues to feel psychologically safe and to focus leaders on problems brewing below the surface. If the leaders rule with an iron fist, managers will not feel comfortable questioning processes. They will not feel empowered. This can lead to accidents and near misses, impacting an organisation’s overall health and safety record and performance.

Edmondson (2018) posits that we live in a VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous) environment. Workarounds can occur when workers do not feel safe enough to speak up and make suggestions to improve the system. Teams with high psychological safety focus on diagnosing problems and improving processes so accidents do not happen again. Those with low psychological safety rely on workarounds. Leaders need to convince workers they are ‘not pro-failure, but they are pro-learning’.

To start developing a good culture, leaders should encourage open discussion, work collaboratively with employees and encourage them to develop and question the way things are done.

Cowley and Borys’ (2014) view is that it is important for organisations to empower employees to adapt to dynamic situations. Organisations need to build employees’ adaptiveness and resilience to ensure human variability is seen as an asset and an important element of effective safety management. Introducing elasticity within the safety management system and stepping away from rule compliance empowers employees to anticipate risks before failure and harm occur.

Focusing on positive feedback to motivate employees to identify and improve health

CASE STUDY

Empowerment: psychological safety

Our client was a multinational manufacturer with a six-sigma philosophy (using data analysis to assure high quality). The culture was one of relentless focus on performance and output. A fatality occurred when unplanned maintenance required workers to move a heavy machine. The team devised a method involving a wheeled sled, while a member of the team was grinding bolts at oor level. The machine toppled, crushing him. The site at which the incident took place had not reported a lost time incident in more than five years and won head

such an event could have occurred at one of their safest locations.

Investigations revealed a very low level of safety competence at the site. The safety manager described himself as ‘really a quality man’ and suggested he spent as little as 10% of his time on safety. Managers and supervisors had attended IOSH Managing Safely courses where risk assessments and method statement completion were discussed; they concluded these were unnecessary at their site because it was foreign-

his life had previous safety infringement investigations, one of which had seen him sent to hospital. The local management had decided not to record this as a lost time incident.

The corporate focus on zero harm effectively incentivised underreporting. No one at site level felt empowered to escalate safety issues to divisional management as previous poor audits had not been dealt with authentically.

Managers felt unheard and, ultimately, became tacitlycomplicit.

and safety issues should be encouraged, rather than penalising those who do not speak up about issues that they have spotted. Conklin (2017) correctly identified that ‘workers aren’t the problem; workers are the problem-solvers’. Good health and safety empowerment within the workforce can assist in driving down incidents and increase overall productivity. Creating ambassadors to drive performance and facilitate a common framework enables a link between the overall strategy and the employees’ everyday work situations.

Additionally, organisations should promote local ownership and create authentic experiences from which workers can learn, engage and share with colleagues. This will all improve employee engagement

and, therefore, empowerment. Sir Edmund Hillary conquered the ferocious conditions on Everest by modelling safety behaviours from which we can all learn.

A rope is part of the fundamental equipment for successful climbers. ROPE is essential for senior managers and safety practitioners to navigate the high altitude of the workplace safely.

Paul Verrico is head of the global EHS team at law firm Eversheds Sutherland. Sarah Valentine is a senior lawyer in that team and an assistant coroner.

To see the references, visit ioshmagazine. com/rope-theory-2. Read part one online at ioshmagazine.com or in the Nov/Dec issue.

Personal noise monitoring made quick and easy

with the doseBadge5 from Cirrus Research

1:1 octave band filters as standard, providing detailed noise data that can be used for the selection of the most appropriate hearing protection

Pre-programmable scheduled measurement timers to ensure that you can capture noise data without having to be on site

Bluetooth® connectivity for remote operation through the dedicated smartphone app

Four simultaneous independent measurement channels to meet any international exposure regulation, standard or guideline

No cables, controls or displays to ensure wearers’ safety and minimise the risk of data tampering, so you can be confident in your results

Discover more: bit.ly/doseBadge-5

BUSINESS

persuasion The art of

OSH is not always top of the boardroom agenda. We explore how you can in uence business leaders’ commercial decisions to get them on board with positive health and safety from the outset.

WORDS EMMA BENNETT

Many health and safety professionals would agree they are often the poorer cousin when it comes to influencing senior business leaders.

OSH can take a back seat to those of other seemingly more tangible business units such as operations, marketing or finance. But there’s plenty of evidence to show that a positive health

and safety culture is just as good for business as a high-profile advertising campaign or new piece of software. So how can professionals persuade decision-makers that investing in health and safety is best for the bottom line?

A study by the International Social Security Association, which interviewed employees from 337 companies across 19 countries, found that

for every euro invested in OSH, they would see a return of €2.20 (£1.90) (EcoOnline, 2020). A safe working environment contributes not only to better mental and physical wellbeing, but higher productivity and fewer days lost due to sickness and injury, less absenteeism and presenteeism, and lower staff turnover.

Reputational risk

Aside from the obvious financial implications, there are much more nuanced impacts of poor OSH, as Angela Gray, senior OSH specialist at IOSH explains. ‘Boards have an obligation to make sure they’re acting on behalf of the shareholders to invest money

that drives profitability. But, over the past 10 years, there has been a greater level of expectation on them not just to get the return on investment, but to do it in the right way.

‘There’s a reputational risk if members don’t take a holistic view that gives back to the wider community, and a huge part of that is their employees. Employees are much savvier these days about what good looks like in the workplace, with more focus on mental health and wellbeing. They want to work for an employer that has the same values as them.’

This focus on having a social licence to operate – as outlined in IOSH’s Catch the Wave sustainability campaign – shows

OSH professionals’ role is much more than that of a health and safety policeman, says Angela. ‘It’s much more about how they support, advise and motivate leadership to do the right thing with the right impacts. OSH professionals are more valued for their intrinsic skills and knowledge that can be applied to multiple parts of the business, from creating a positive working environment to sourcing the right equipment that’s safe for your workers to operate.’

Bridging the gap

Kevin Robins CMIOSH, chief operating officer at Havio, an OSH consultancy for construction and the built environment, agrees that collaboration is vital if they are to convince decision-makers of the importance of investing in health and safety. ‘The C-suite will always have a commercial perspective, and we’re coming at it from a compliance and health and safety angle,’ he says. ‘It’s our job to bridge that knowledge gap by understanding the health and safety issues in the business and providing real solutions, and, importantly, linking those with the financial benefits.’

This involves working with all levels of the organisation to make everyone feel part of the process. ‘If you create a collaborative environment with the people at the coalface where the real-life problems occur, that’s where you’ll find the solutions. In OSH you have to be a good listener, but you also have to ask the right questions.’

The next step, Kevin explains, is to present the findings to the board in a way that they understand and identify with. ‘You have to adapt your response and delivery to your audience. What works on-site doesn’t work in the boardroom. So do a root-cause analysis and then provide real data and statistics off the back of that to explain that you’ll see absenteeism go down, behaviours improve, people become happier going to work, and then you get higher productivity and positive interactions.’

Speaking the right language

Use the right words Be adaptable and exible in what you say and how you say it to

Think commercially Learn how to write a solid business case that includes a cost/benefit analysis outlining the direct and indirect costs of health and safety challenges – and how you will solve them.

clearly Be articulate and present a solid argument in a calm and reasonable way. Presentations should be succinct, onmessage and backed with evidence.

Build trusted relationships with the leadership team. This means being able to have open and honest conversations and working closely with leaders to provide advice and support.

Consider culture Every organisation is different, with varying levels of safety maturity. Different in uencing tactics will work depending on how proactive businessesare.

• Many of the skills required to be an effective OSH in uencer, such as stakeholder management and building effective relationships, form part of IOSH’s competency framework. Find out more at iosh.com/my-iosh/ competency-framework

Show business acumen

This tactic of using statistical evidence and research – known as rational persuasion –was found to be the most effective among OSH professionals. Dr Cassie Madigan, a senior lecturer in occupational health and safety science at the University of Queensland, conducted surveys and interviews with safety and non-safety professionals in Australia and the UK to find out the best way to influence leaders.

She says: ‘Influencing is such an important skill for health and safety professionals – it’s 99% of our job. Most

decisions that impact health and safety are made by other people in the organisation. But we can use our interpersonal skills and systems approach to safety to create conditions where we can influence decisionmaking and change the shape of risk.

‘Rational persuasion was the most effective. Having the ability to write a good business case, including a cost/benefit analysis, is vital, so you must understand what is important to the organisation. Safety is just one driver of several, including financial, political, legal or reputational, and you need to address all of those.’

Know your audience

The second most effective tactic highlighted in Cassie’s research was ‘inspirational appeal’, where professionals try to engage the person’s values and beliefs. She explains: ‘That means we have to think about whom we’re trying to influence, get into their shoes and find out what assumptions they are making.’

Stuart Haysman, of Haysman Consulting, agrees that knowing and understanding your audience is key to getting them on board. ‘If you only get to present to the board for five minutes once a month, you need to understand what’s driving them as individuals. What are their roles and what are they interested in? You have to understand that in a senior management team group, each person has a different goal – so your approach should change depending on whom you’re talking to.

‘Then give them something memorable that helps to convince them of your case. If you’re talking to a finance director, use real figures and so on. Also, plan your timing carefully: if the company is making a loss, are they going to want to spend £20,000 on a mental health campaign?’

So what doesn’t work? Reading business leaders the riot act on legislation. ‘Don’t just use the law as a stick, because it just turns people off,’ says Angela. ‘They know about compliance and the danger of prosecutions.

Instead you should be reflecting it back to them in a positive light and talk about the benefits of good OSH to the business.’

Stay positive

Cassie’s research backs this up. ‘The “legitimating tactic” – referring to rules, policies and legislation to influence decisionmakers – was found to be the least effective. Compliance only gets you so far. What you want is commitment. If you’re telling someone to do something, it takes away their autonomy and people don’t like that.

‘OSH professionals can sometimes focus too much on the negative, when we should understand there can be an upside to risk. ISO 31000 [on risk management] includes the consideration of opportunity risks, so we need to balance grasping those opportunities and managing those risks.’

By doing away with the traditional view of health and safety as a barrier to innovation and profit, professionals can create an open dialogue with those who hold the purse strings and give OSH a permanent seat at the boardroom table.

‘Make it clear that we’re not here to bash you down,’ says Kevin. ‘You can break down barriers by asking the right questions and being responsive to your audience to really understand what motivates them. That’s credit in the bank.’

To see references for this article, visit ioshmagazine.com/in uencing-decisions

CASE STUDY Influence in action

Kevin Robins was working as health, safety, quality and environment director at a building contractor growing at an exponential rate.

The challenge

‘The workforce grew from around 80 site workers to 200 to satisfy new projects. There had to be an effective roll-out of new safety processes, awareness campaigns, trends analysis and more proactive monitoring to ensure new standards were implemented and upheld.’

In uencing behaviour

‘To solidify support from the senior leadership team [SLT] I put forward my plan as a business case, which included benefits that could be realised. I reinforced the idea by inviting another member of the SLT to a site to show how their presence and being seen to walk and talk the initiative would captivate the workforce – it did.’

The business introduced a: New near-miss reporting plan More collaborative site and management team-working dynamic to allow everyone to freely challenge each other in a supportive environment.

The result

By the end of the next full year the accident frequency rate halved.

A SMART WAY FORWARD?

AI is transforming the workplace, including health and safety. Here’s what OSH professionals need to know.

WORDS KATHY OXTOBY

For some of us, artificial intelligence (AI) is the stuff of dreams, making our lives easier. For others, it is a dystopian nightmare, where robots replace humans and take over the world. But whatever your perception of AI, for decades now, it has been a part of our everyday lives at home and in the workplace.

Put simply, AI is ‘a general-purpose technology capable of mimicking human intelligence processes’, says Iván Williams Jiménez, policy development manager at IOSH. ‘The increasing deployment of AI technologies can not only perform tasks previously undertaken by humans, but also observe information and undertake analysis in different ways.’

More businesses are introducing worker management systems based on AI to increase efficiency and productivity, and to identify and manage OSH risks.

Dr Laura Bradshaw, research programme lead in technology at IOSH, says there are many ways that AI can be employed to support safety and health in the workplace. It can be used for near-miss detection, ‘but needs to be used cautiously, as this could result in complacency around reporting’, says Laura.

She says AI can detect when people do not follow safety protocols, and offers costeffective learning opportunities in safety and health. It can be used for speech recognition and for incident reporting. It can recognise still images, situations and objects. By using virtual reality, AI can be used for practice drills, which are normally expensive to run.

AI has enormous potential to manage OSH. ‘AI can easily be used to replace workers in hazardous environments – drones can be used to perform more efficient workplace inspections in complex environments,’ says Iván.

Laura says AI can free up workers from mundane repetitive tasks. It is also ‘quick, cost-effective and efficient, and doesn’t tire – it has 24/7 applicability’, she says.

AI is good for planning and training, says David Sharp, founder and CEO of

CASE STUDY

AI motorway schemes are placed on pause

New all-lane running smart motorway schemes use AI to regulate tra c, but their roll-out has been paused by the government until five years of safety data is available. The technology, which uses

AI and machine learning algorithms to identify potential issues, provides road managers with the precise real-time location and trajectory of vehicles. The aim is to help predict and prevent collisions or issues. ‘This is a work-

related issue as many of those on the road drive for a living, such as truck, bus and taxi drivers, but also trades, delivery or sales personnel, selfemployed or any other role that includes driving for work,’ says Laura.

International Workplace – a digital learning provider specialising in health and safety training. ‘We use machine learning to deliver our course materials, and algorithms to recommend courses and track learner performance,’ he says.

Predicting future outcomes

US-headquartered AI company SparkCognition provides a variety of industries, including manufacturing, oil and gas, and aerospace, with a wide array of AI technology to help predict future outcomes, optimise processes and protect against hazards.

‘We provide organisations with AI that analyses camera footage to prevent near misses in the warehouse, on the plant floor and in difficult-to-access areas,’ says Stephen Gold, chief marketing officer. ‘AI can detect

the likelihood of an incident in “real time”, so that managers can be alerted to shut down equipment to prevent injury.’

Ireland-based software company Protex AI helps environmental health and safety teams ‘to use AI as a prevention tool to identify behaviours that lead to accidents, rather than waiting for them to occur’, says CEO Dan Hobbs.

The company’s privacy-preserving software plugs into existing CCTV infrastructure to use its computer vision technologies to capture unsafe events autonomously in settings such as warehouses, manufacturing facilities and ports. Working with the likes of leading UK retailer Marks & Spencer, Protex AI has been able to decrease incidents in the workplace by 80%, says Dan.

But AI also brings risks and challenges. ‘Potential misuse of AI-enabled workplace sensors could lead to tracking of all aspects of worker activity,’ says Iván.

He says algorithmic decision-making in people analytics and performance management does not normally involve human intervention and ethical consideration. ‘People working under

AI sensors could lead to tracking of all aspects of worker activity

algorithmic management could be exposed to heightened physical and psychosocial risks and stress.’

The roll-out of AI in the workplace can cause anxiety around job losses and role retention, says Laura. ‘Trust can be eroded with poor engagement. There is a need to communicate with workers early in the implementation process, and engagement is vital.’

AI can increase bias. ‘There is a danger that data could be used for discriminatory purposes. We need to remember that AI data is not neutral or objective – it has human bias encoded into it,’ says David.

The pitfalls of the unintended and unethical use of using AI systems in the workplace, and the safety problems they might cause staff, are increasingly well documented. For example, Amazon has significantly invested in the automation

and robotisation of its warehouses. Despite this, work-related injuries have been reported to be 50% higher at robotic facilities than in its conventional warehouses in the US (Reveal Center for Investigative Reporting, 2020). ‘This raises questions on work intensity levels, the pace of work and productivity quotas pressure on warehouse workers,’ says Iván.

While much has been reported about AI’s failures – and successes – there is much that is unknown about this technology. As a recent NIOSH science blog notes ‘research gaps exist regarding the use and impact of AI on the workforce’ (Vietas, 2021). So what do we not understand about the use of AI on workplace safety?

Bridging the knowledge gaps

AI can present a picture through data, but it doesn’t always show the entire picture of what is happening. ‘AI will be a tool that can be used to enhance processes, but there will always be a need for human integration and connection in these processes,’ says Laura.

CASE STUDY AI air disasters

The Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System, an AI system designed to activate and assist the pilot in ight stabilisation, resulted in two Boeing 737 Max aeroplanes crashing. A Lion Air ight plunged into the sea off Jakarta and anEthiopian Airlines ight crashed after takeoff from Addis Ababa within four months of each other in 2018-19. The deaths of 346 people led to the grounding of the Max eet, and globalscrutiny.

Source: Rushe, 2022

A particular concern about AI is its increasing use in monitoring and surveillance through algorithmic tracking, says Laura. ‘In a positive light, it can be seen as monitoring worker wellbeing, such as ensuring adequate rest breaks for drivers.

‘However, it can also calculate how long workers spend in restrooms or the number of breaks taken within a shift, surveying movements via trackpad, fingerprints, webcam monitoring or through wearables.’

These growing cases of high levels of surveillance and tracking are having adverse effects on workers’ stress, anxiety and depression (Vou, 2021), says Laura.

‘Robust legislation and safeguarding are required around algorithmic management, to ensure workers’ safety and privacy and to protect them from adverse effects or psychosocial issues,’ she adds.

With the increasing use of AI for workplace decision-making and assisted

How to ensure AI is used safely

Effective Ensure AI is the right tool to address the problem/concern.

Explainable The logic of AI and its decisions should be communicated to stakeholders in a concise and useful manner.

Accountable Organisations and individuals should be accountable for the outcomes of the AI systems that they develop and implement.

Secure AI systems should be safe from outsideinterference.

Fair AI systems should be aware of and appropriately address potential discrimination and bias.

work, ‘it is essential that more robust evidence focuses around the potential OSH benefits as well as risks’, says Iván.

‘It would be interesting to explore more available data and evidence drawing the links between the adoption of AI technologies to reduce work-related injuries, or to alleviate work-related physical demands, repetitive and stressful tasks which cause musculoskeletal disorders or mental ill health,’ he says.

There is also much that OSH professionals need to learn about the adoption and integration of AI technologies in the workplace. Iván suggests AI knowledge gaps are partly due to ‘a lack of transparency’

RESOURCES

IOSH’s response to the European Commission white paper on AI: bit.ly/white-paperartificial-intelligence

IOSH’s self-driving vehicles: new safety ambition consultation: iosh. com/about-iosh/our-in uence/ consultations/self-driving-carsnew-safety-ambition

for their job,’ says Dan. ‘At Protex AI, we educate and reassure teams that AI is there to help.’

Process creep

Could we hold back AI while more research is conducted? Laura says: ‘This is challenging because the pace of progress is so rapid, and research is already playing catch up. Unfortunately, we don’t always take the time to press pause and collect more information around areas of concern.

‘Legislation is also constantly evolving as we further understand emerging technologies and how they are being implemented and adopted.

around how these technologies are adopted and applied to workplaces.

‘To that extent, corporations in this digital age need to keep pace with requirements for enhanced public disclosure, stronger due diligence, and policies and practices for the governance of AI.’

Iván says practitioners also need to be ‘better informed and catch up with technology debates and consequently scaling up the role of OSH in this field’.

‘This also applies to day-to-day policies and procedures. For example, fit-for-purpose risk management strategies with regards to the implementation of new technologies might become more relevant than ever,’ he says.

AI companies have a crucial role to play in educating people about how it works in practice, to allay fears and address concerns. ‘SparkCognition has a 50-acre research facility, which brings together the physical and digital world to help organisations really experience this technology, how it works and how it will optimise their businesses,’ says Stephen.

‘The onus is on AI companies to inform people about what it means

‘Laws can be made for one use of technology, and it is then adopted in a way entirely different from the original intended use. This “process creep” is a concern for lawmakers who are trying to catch up with the rapid speed of emerging technologies.’

Looking to the development of AI technologies in the future, IOSH will continue to advocate that they ‘incorporate a more human-centred and ethical focus, that prioritises occupational safety and health and process safety’, says Iván.

‘We believe that before any AI-enabled devices or systems are introduced into a workplace, a thorough and more proactive OSH review of their benefits and risks should be carried out.

‘OSH professionals, researchers, employers and workers must continue considering how AI-enabled applications in the workplace might impact the workforce and workplaces – positively and negatively.’

Whatever changes it brings to the workplace, ‘we need to remember that AI is as much about humans, and human behaviour, as it is about technology’, says David. ‘So whether you view it as brilliant or terrifying, AI is really what you make it. Don’t let it disempower you. Use it how you want to use it.’

To see references for this article, go to ioshmagazine.com/AI-workforce

By Paul Nicholas COMET Signals product manager

T

here are numerous examples of how AI is being used to enhance or improve workers’ tasks and roles. When considering implementing any new technology, it is the responsibility of the QHSE team to ensure that workers’ health and safety is protected.

However, I’d like to present a positively for managing an organisation’s and ultimately their employees’ health and safety. What if AI is used to look at any QHSE events, such as incidents, including lost time injuries, near misses or observations to derive insights? Wouldn’t that enable professionals to be more proactive rather than reactive in their organisation?

Using a form of AI called Natural Language Processing (NLP), COMET® Signals takes the free text description of these events and performs analysis to determine insights such as:

KEY TOPICS

Frequent phrases or keywords that occur in patterns, such as ‘forklift’, ‘fall from height’, etc.

ROOT CAUSE

A powerful taxonomy determines typical root cause categorisation solely from the event descriptions. This highlights not just a mythical primary cause, but multiple causes spanning the entire organisational spectrum.

HAZARDS

Commonly occurring hazards that contribute to performance issues and ultimately root causation.

SIF / RIDDOR

Records displaying SIF / RIDDOR characteristics can be isolated at the touch of a button and then explored to identify previously unseen insights.

These can be presented and correlated, displaying each category in order, and

combining these insights with some such as business area, or location, we can start to build some powerful views of the data, combining the AI-generated

For example, if locations are recorded, we can display heat maps of events event type, root cause or topic. We can something very insightful which can then be used to address underlying issues. Moving forward, the actions taken can be tracked against future events to determine if they had the desired outcome.

The data analysed by COMET® Signals can be tracked to show the frequency and timing of events per type, generating a comparison between periods, such as year on year. Once the data is mature, our team can even train the AI to become predictive by recognising previous insights, any actions taken and outcomes.

This all sounds great, however, the insights that can be derived can only ever be as good as the underlying data provided. Once a QHSE professional has seen what’s possible, they will be

determined that their company’s record keeping is as good as it can be, without being onerous, to ensure that real value can be derived from that data. The alternative is that this data is potentially being wasted, as no real information can be gleaned from it, so you question what is being captured and why in the

This is taking the application of AI in from previous events and experience, enabling the team to be proactive, and serious incidents.

COMET® Signals forms part of STC INSISO’s suite of COMET® incident investigation tools. The team behind the product have a combined total of more than 400 years’ experience in incident investigation and root cause learning and are committed to working with clients to reduce incidents, non-compliances, and loss.

www.cometanalysis.com

If there’s a word OSH professionals are likely to be hearing more of, it’s resilience. ‘It’s still relatively new in an occupational context,’ says Lynda Folan, doctor of organisational psychology and author of Leader Resilience. ‘But as organisations have recognised the difficulties navigating a volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous world, there has been a massive focus on resilience.’

Broadly defined as the ability to cope with, and not be deflected by, change, resilience appears easy to define but, as with many emerging specialisms, the details are more nuanced.

‘At an organisational level, it’s much more about the maintenance of the “system” functioning, regardless of what destabilisations there are,’ argues David Denyer, professor of leadership and organisational change at Cranfield University. ‘This is important to understand from an OSH perspective, because there is a difference between resilience and risk-based thinking. Resilience is less understanding risk

better, more ascertaining whether your system is resilient regardless of the things that can impact it.’

He adds: ‘Safety management is a sub-component of it. In uncertain times, organisations have a tendency to batten down and control risk; resilience is being aware of this, but having an adaptive capability.’

Systems shocks

Knowing this difference matters, experts argue, because there is a more HR-focused interest in resilience, which looks at individuals. So a confusing narrative is forming which says organisational resilience is the sum of having lots of resilient people.

‘We need to be careful to say that organisational resilience must be about the organisation – its ability to “flex” to the needs of the moment,’ says Kate Field, global head of health,

safety and wellbeing at BSI, the business standards and improvement company. ‘Individual resilience has been used the wrong way – as an inoculation against work-related stress, rather than changing working conditions. The more accurate way to think about organisational resilience is almost like it’s a dynamic risk assessment around processes and how they need to adapt.’

There needs to be a priority placed around psychological wellbeing but the emphasis should be, argues David, on developing new skills, ‘being both compliant, but also an innovator’.

He adds: ‘That’s why it cuts through to being a leadership challenge. Think of it as being able to provide options. When people and organisations are under stress, it’s because they have run out of options. Resilience isn’t about stopping bad things from happening, but more about finding out what the other options are. To this extent, having resilient people can support an organisation’s own resilience efforts.’

THE BRILLIANCE OF RESILIENCE

More and more organisations are talking about building it. But what does being resilient mean, and what role can OSH professionals play? Peter Crush investigates.

So how should OSH professionals support and build resilience? ‘I think where people are being set up for failure – that’s where identifying training needs and structures becomes important,’ argues Shona Hirons, global resilience coach and founder of Mindset in Motion. ‘The key is trickling the concept throughout the leadership team, and fostering more empathetic leadership – which enables people to speak up.’

Lynda says: ‘We must build resilience into all aspects of the organisation’s functioning. Individual resilience is enhanced when people have the capacity to constructively process their experiences and have rewired their brains for optimism.’

Tools and training

At critical data, communications and network provider Arqiva, Sally Ford CMIOSH, director of resilience and risk, helps people do this. Her job sits in operations and her role helps ‘people, processes and physical assets adapt and be successful’. ‘From an OSH point of view our emphasis is giving people the tools and training to be able to react better, but also improve the design of work, so people can “fail” safely,’ she says.

Sally suggests OSH professionals are well positioned to champion resilience. ‘The skill-set required is then expanding

on this,’ she adds. ‘You can also improve resilience by identifying things that could impact success before they happen; that is, classic risk analysis.’

According to Nick Wilson, former GB Health and Safety Executive inspector and director of health and safety services at WorkNest, the key is remembering resilience is not about seeking perfection. ‘Yes, you can aspire to it,’ he says, ‘but resilience is about understanding why things happen and not pointing fingers.’

Proving an organisation is resilient can be tricky. ‘Measurement is critical,’ says Lynda. ‘We have seen the development of resilience diagnostics specifically for the organisational context. There are also individual diagnostics that allow people to self-report, as well as team and organisational resilience measures.’

But, says Nick: ‘We also need to remember that measuring things not happening is not an indication that we are resilient. It’s how you cope when things do happen that’s the key difference here.’

Those who understand resilience will create better, safer, shock-resistant organisations. Nick concludes: ‘It’s the organisation’s responsibility to point people in a common direction. This is the sum of how people behave and react.’

To view references for this article, see ioshmagazine.com/corporate-resilience

TOP TIPS

How to be resilient

Gavin Scarr Hall, director of health and safety at professional services firm Peninsula, o ers his advice:

Focus on what is in your control It is easy to feel overwhelmed by events both in and out of the workplace, but sometimes it is best to focus on the things that you can control. Small victories are still victories and celebrating them will boost your mood and increase your sense of what is possible.

Stay calm in a crisis Maintaining composure can help you make logical decisions. A roomful of calm heads can turn a chaotic mess into ordered actions that achieve a solution.

Be proactive Problems do not resolve themselves. Resilient people pick up on little issues and deal with them before they gain momentum.

Develop a support network

Working with like-minded colleagues boosts confidence and offers an outlet for stress that works bothways.

Impact of resilience – or lack of it – on global GDP growth, according to the World Economic Forum.

Reduction in workers’ depression symptoms that can be achieved with resilience training, according to studies.

How much lower burnout scores are foremployees who are highly resilient andagile.

Re ect and learn We all make mistakes at work. It is how we learn from them and take those lessons into the next situation that builds realresilience.

shows are a great opportunity for the OSH community to come together to share ideas and best practice. We’re excited about bringing a varied programme of educational and innovative content to the following events:

EVIDENCE

TOPIC: Artificial intelligence

TITLE: Advanced robotics and automation: implications for occupational safety and health

PUBLISHED BY: EU-OSHA

SUMMARY: The automation of physical tasks through robots, cobots [collaborative robots] and artificial intelligence (AI) is impacting workplaces across many sectors. This report describes the different types of tasks performed by advanced robotics and explores the opportunities, challenges and risks in terms of psychosocial, physical and organisational effects on workers and workplaces. The report also explores safety standards and highlights the importance of accurate risk assessment and end-user training.

READ REPORT AT: bit.ly/eu-osha-robotics

TOPIC: Shared workspaces

TITLE: ‘It’s like, instant respect’: Coworking spaces as identity anchoring environments in the new economy

PUBLISHED BY: New Technology, Work and Employment

SUMMARY: This study explores how coworking spaces enable individuals to shape their professional identities, while providing other important attributes of work to help them

From the papers

feel embodied and grounded. Drawing from interviews and surveys of members of a large coworking chain across the US, the study finds that coworking spaces serve as identity anchoring environments.

READ REPORT AT: bit.ly/NTWE-coworking

TOPIC: Moral injury

TITLE: Developing an understanding of moral injury inbusiness settings

PUBLISHED BY: Affinity Health at Work

SUMMARY: Typically, moral injury research has been conducted in military settings and more recently healthcare. This research answers calls for evidence to understand the extent of the problem in other occupations. While the report

doesn’t establish specific causal pathways to moral injury, the recommendations for individual, group, leader and organisational responses to mitigate for moral injury areimportant and provide useful guidance.

READ REPORT AT: bit.ly/affinity-moral-injury

TOPIC: Health and wellbeing

TITLE: Health and wellbeing atwork report 2022

PUBLISHED BY: CIPD

SUMMARY: The survey was conducted online and sent to people professionals and senior HR leaders in the UK. In total, 804 organisations responded, covering more than 4.3 million employees. There is slightly less focus on wellbeing in 2022 than in 2021. Also

noteworthy is that ‘less than twofifths (38%) of respondents agree that managers are confident to have sensitive discussions and signpost people to expert sources of help when needed; even fewer (29%) believe they are confident and competent to spot the early warning signs of mental ill health.’

READ REPORT AT: bit.ly/cipd-wellbeing-survey

TOPIC: MSDs

TITLE: Recipe for prevention of MSDs: learnings from biomechanical responses in team lifting and sudden load drops

PUBLISHED BY: University of Waterloo, Canada

SUMMARY: The study looked at a four-person lift and the changes in force when one person drops the load. It found, during a drop, excess load moves to adjacent lifters. Non-droppers may be seriously injured. This should be considered in multi-person lifts and alternatives sought, such as mechanical handling.

READ REPORT AT: bit.ly/uwaterloo-msd-prevention

Discover the competencies for each paper at ioshmagazine.com/jan-research

We round up some of the latest research and reports relevant to OSH professionals.

Managing Sustainably How do you get the best from your people?

In an increasingly volatile, uncertain and chaotic business landscape, smart businesses are investing in their people.

A report by the International Social Security Association (ISSA) estimated that every euro invested in occupational safety and health sees a return of €2.20.

Invest in them and they’ll invest in you, for more information visit iosh.com/managingsustainably or scan the QR code

Research: in depth

TITLE

Workers’ activity profiles associated with predicted 10year cardiovascular disease risk

PUBLICATION

Journal of the American Heart Association

BACKGROUND/AIMS

There is a need to explore common activity patterns undertaken by workers and the association between these activity profiles and cardiovascular disease (CVD). This study set out to explore the number and type of distinct profiles of activity patterns among workers and the association between these profiles, and predict 10-year risk for a first atherosclerotic CVD event.

METHODS AND FINDINGS

Distinct activity patterns from a crosssection of workers’ accelerometer data were sampled from Canadian Health Measures Survey participants (five cycles, 2007-17) and identified using hierarchical cluster analysis techniques. Six distinct activity profiles were identified from 8909 workers. Compared with the ‘lowest activity’ profile, individuals in the ‘highest activity’ and ‘moderate evening activity’ profiles were at 42% lower risk and 33% lower risk of predicted 10-year atherosclerotic CVD risk of >10%, respectively. ‘Moderate activity’ and ‘fluctuations of moderate activity’ profiles were also associated with lower risk estimates, whereas the ‘high daytime activity’ profile was not statistically different to the reference profile.

SIX PROFILES

The six activity profiles of workers were: 1. Steady movers (3219 workers). This group has moderate activity levels throughout the day, followed by light activity during the evening. They report

take a close look at two recent research papers and explore how their

ndings can inform OSH practice.

low levels of physical activity for recreation. Compared with sedentaries, they have a 14% lower risk of heart disease over 10 years.

2. The sedentaries (2808 workers). This group engages in low or light activity during at-work and off-work hours. They report low levels of recreational physical activity.

3. Dynamic movers (1194 workers). This group alternates between light activity and moderate activity throughout the day. They are the second most active group for recreational activities. Compared with sedentaries, the group has a 27% lower risk of heart disease over 10 years.

4. Physical workers (713 workers). This group engages in vigorous physical activity during most daytime hours. This group’s risk of heart disease does not differ from sedentaries in a statistically significant way.

5. The night shifters (225 workers). This group stays moderately active from midday through to midnight. Its risk of heart disease is 33% lower than that of sedentaries.

6. Exercisers (750 workers). This group spends parts of the work day doing light or moderate activity, but also engages in vigorous physical activity at the start of the day, around noon, and again in the late afternoon and early evening. This group has the highest level of recreational physical activity. It has a 42% lower risk of heart disease compared with sedentaries.

CONCLUSIONS

Workers accumulating physical activity throughout the day and during recreational hours were found to have optimal CVD risk profiles. Workers accumulating physical activity only during daytime work hours were not associated with reduced CVD risk. Findings can inform alternative strategies to conferring the cardiovascular benefits

of physical activity among workers. Large prospective studies are needed to confirm these findings.

RESEARCHER’S TAKEAWAY

‘We typically think a sedentary lifestyle is a risk factor for heart disease and that we should be more active throughout the day to lower our risk. Our research suggests the health effects of activity are different depending on the context in which it is accumulated. Workers who are very active or moderately active mostly during their daytime work hours might not be any different to sedentary people in terms of their future heart disease risk. This might be because work-related activity is either too low to improve fitness, or too physically strenuous and with little opportunity to rest. Strategies promoting physical activity only during work hours may be less effective than those promoting physical activity outside work hours.’ Aviroop Biswas, lead author

IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE –IOSH’S TAKE

When we think of sedentary work, we immediately think of the health implications around tasks and job roles where there is a lack of movement, such as sitting, reclining or standing. This research not only brings to light new types of sedentary work, but also emphasises the health impact these types of sedentary work can have. The paper gives OSH professionals an opportunity to consider tasks that could have health implications for workers which might not have been considered. One example of this is workers who are conducting physically strenuous tasks with little rest – this could be manual handling tasks – and looking at this not only from an MSD perspective but also having the knowledge to appreciate these tasks could have cardiovascular implications if they are not managed effectively.

TITLE Workplace bullying of immigrants working in Sweden

PUBLICATION

The International Journal of Human Resource Management

BACKGROUND/AIMS

Immigration to Sweden has increased steadily in recent decades. Although there are a few studies that use a representative sample to study ethnicity and ill treatment at work, they do not have a specific focus on bullying. To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study with a nationally representative sample of the workforce to investigate ethnic minorities and exposure to workplace bullying using a comprehensive measure of the phenomenon. The aim of this study was to investigate the risks of being bullied at work based on country of birth, and compared with natives.

METHOD AND FINDINGS

The authors used a representative sample of the Swedish workforce collected in the autumn of 2017 (n=1856). The results showed a more than doubled risk of being bullied for the foreign-born.

Coming from a culturally dissimilar country, the risk of becoming a victim of bullying was almost fourfold. The increased risk was only for person-related bullying, indicating a risk of being excluded

from the social work environment. There was a greater risk associated with self-labelling as bullied than with the behavioural experience method. Self-labelling could possibly be construed as a mix of exposure to bullying behaviours and being discriminated against, making it a less suitable method when studying bullying for minorities.

CONCLUSIONS

Being born in another country has consequences for how one is treated at work, and the perception of mistreatment is not the result of a general dissatisfaction with one’s work situation. The results indicate the foreign-born are being excluded and are not let in, in the same way as natives, in the social work environment. The risks of workplace bullying are only present when it comes to person-related negative acts, such as social isolation and personal

attacks – indicating a predatory origin of the bullying behaviours. The results show the importance of addressing these issues at work, as it severely affects each individual exposed to the negative treatment, but also probably the organisation as a whole and the work group in which the negative treatment is occurring.

RESEARCHER’S TAKEAWAY

‘Workplace bullying is a detrimental global problem. This Swedish study investigates what happens when the world comes to you; that is, whether people with another origin than the majority have a higher bullying risk. The study is unusual as it uses a nationally representative sample and a comprehensive behavioural measure of bullying.

‘From a social identity perspective, foreign-born workers may be in a weak position in the labour market, being a salient outgroup easy to single out.

Another finding was that there was only a higher risk for person-related bullying (such as social exclusion), in contrast to work-related bullying (such as excessive work-related critique). There were no differences regarding how natives and foreign-born perceived their general working conditions.’

Stefan

Blomberg, co-author

IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE –IOSH’S TAKE

The ideas underpinning the research – particularly the notion of ‘in-groups’ and ‘out-groups’ – are pertinent to discussions around bullying. They offer a useful frame for discussing the way bullying and discriminatory behaviours/cultures emerge. In other words, where there is a strongly formed ‘in-group’, difference from norms can quickly be perceived as a threat. This might be particularly relevant to certain industries.

One of the recommendations is to focus on the development of organisational cultures, so that ingroups are a broader church based on ‘who we are’ as an organisation, rather than ‘who we are’ as a working group.

Overall, this research is interesting and it works from an equality, diversity and inclusion perspective in the workplace. It links back to the ‘Culture’ tab (under ‘Technical’) in IOSH’s competency framework too.

FROM A SOCIAL IDENTITY PERSPECTIVE, FOREIGN-BORN WORKERS MAY BE IN A WEAK POSITION

THE CROP Cream of

WORDS SALLY HALES

Brian Rees can trace his passion for promoting farm safety back to the start of his career. ‘Since my time in Young Farmers Clubs in the 1970s and 80s, and later the National Farmers’ Union and the Country Land and Business Association, I have always tried to convince the leaders of our industry of the need to improve health and safety in agriculture,’ he says.

The farmer – who runs his own training business, works as a consultant and mentor, and has his own farm in Powys, UK – has been named a Farm Safety Hero by charity Yellow Wellies.

Key to driving up safety standards is getting workers and employers on the same page, he says. ‘Our industry is no different to any other – unless you have the employers and decisionmakers on board, other health and safety activities in the workforce can be far less effective.’

Getting hands-on and being able to talk farmer-to-farmer has also proved important, Brian adds. ‘One of my main activities has been skills and health and safety training. This involves going into

the workplace and delivering hands-on training involving lift trucks, tractors, safe use of pesticides and general site safety, again getting the managers and supervisors involved as much as possible.’

In 2001, he joined an Agriculture Safety and Health Awareness Day team of 12 who toured rural England, Wales and Scotland. Up to 300 farmers at a time would receive practical advice and guidance on how to make their farms safer. ‘Some winters we had more than 8000 farmers,’ Brian says. ‘A huge advantage of these events was all the instructors were from farming backgrounds, so we were talking farmer-to-farmer.’

Brian has also been awarded the Lantra Wales Lifetime Achievement Award, as well as being a past chair of the Wales Farm Safety Partnership and was a member of the IOSH Rural Industries Group for six years. The farmer has also worked on fatal accident investigations and acted as an expert witness for the GB Health and Safety Executive.

Have you or your organisation made positive strides on OSH that you’d like to shout about? Let us know and it could feature here on our new positive news page. Email: editorial@ioshmagazine.com

IOSH magazine would like to extend its warm thanks to the volunteers who took part in the Talking Shop feature in previous issues for their support and insight.

Mental health in check

Paul Hendry CMIOSH tells us why the professional services firm, Jacobs, was driven to organise the world’s biggest mental health check-in.

More than 20,000 people around the world checked in online to use a free tool to help them understand their state of mind and offer strategies for mental health development during a campaign for World Mental Health Day on 10 October.

While the event became the biggest ever of its kind, the real goal for Jacobs, which organised the event, was to ‘break down barriers that hinder honest conversation about mental health and encourage an open culture of support,’ says Paul Hendry CMIOSH, Jacobs’ vice-president of health, safety and environment.

‘By completing a check-in, people will ideally be better equipped to understand how they are coping, assess the early indicators of associated mental health challenges, start positive and active conversations, and get support much earlier.’

Making mental health and wellbeing a priority is at the core of Jacobs’ One Million Lives campaign, of which the check-in formed a part. Senior leadership involvement is proving crucial in the success of the scheme. ‘Our chair and CEO Steve Demetriou is a trained positive mental health champion, along with all our executive leadership team. Once the top executive talks about it, it makes it easier for everyone else.’

Farmer Brian Rees has been named a Farm Safety Hero for his work in driving up safety standards. We find out the secrets of his success.

IOSH Managing Sustainably

E-learning

Our in-house team of IEMA and IOSHapproved tutors support your learning

Our courses are 100% online and can be started immediately

Our courses work on PCs, tablets and smartphones (internet access required)

VitalSkills.co.uk is an online training platform from HSQE Ltd.

We have a wide range of IOSH, IEMA, RoSPA, IATP and CPD approved/assured training courses available for an immediate start.

Our in-house support team provide assistance 7 days a week for customers

You get a dashboard that enables course completions to be monitored

We are rated ‘Outstanding’ by IOSH and score 4.84 out of 5 on reviews.co.uk

Approved training centre

VitalSkills.co.uk

Scan the QR code for more information

Approved training provider 980

Approved training provider 980

Ready to move beyond compliance and towards a culture that values people, their communities and the physical environment?