Heightened awareness required
October 1st 2007

Planet Platforms hosted a Retail Work at Height Forum earlier this month, with keynote speakers including representatives from the HSE, John Lewis Partnership and KPMG delivering a clear message: If managed from the top down, sensibly and proactively, health and safety can be a boon rather than a burden. Brendan Coyne reports

Although focussed on the retail sector, the forum also looked at broader health and safety issues applicable to most companies.

Representing the HSE, John Holland told delegates that, while there were 45 fatalities in all sectors resulting from falls from height in 2006/2007 and 3,351 major injuries (at a cost of £189m), the UK now has one of the best health and safety records in Europe. "Since the Health and Safety at Work Act, fatal accidents have fallen by three quarters and non fatal by two thirds," he said. However, provisional HSE figures (which Holland states are subject to final analysis), show that there were 14 fatalities from ladder falls for 2006/2007, up from nine the previous year.

Holland said progress is blighted by a perception among employers that risk assessment is time consuming, bureaucratic and costly. "This leads to mismanagement and myth, such as 'HSE has banned ladders'. Frankly, nothing is further from the truth." Holland said practical application of the work at height regulations is actually straightforward: the duty holder (ie any person who controls the work of others) should take a simple methodical approach.

"The key point is don't rush in, consider the task: Do you need to work at height? If so, what equipment do you need? Consider the ground conditions and surrounding area – how would a rescue operation be affected? Will there be people in the area below? Take measures to prevent falls and where risk cannot be eliminated, minimise distances and consequences of a fall should one occur." With two successful initiatives helping to enable the steady downward trend in accidents (the Height Aware campaign of 2006 and this year's Ladder Exchange, which, according to Holland has led to 2,000 'dodgy' ladders being taken out of the workplace) Holland says the HSE and industry "now have the opportunity to maintain momentum". Another HSE slips, trips and falls campaign launches in spring, a key theme of which will be training and competence.

Lead from the front KPMG's Adam Black, a safety consultant advising leadership of multinationals how to improve health and safety, says the key to achieving positive results is a top down approach.

"Management decisions and behaviour influences operators," says Black. "The leadership must be seen to walk the talk... engaging the workforce, ensuring they understand the wider business risks, involving them and encouraging them to become part of the process." With businesses constantly changing, Black says health and safety policies must also be 'live' with comprehensive audits to discover issues' underlying root causes. Crucially, data must come back to management so that effects can be monitored and reviewed. "In my experience, where this has happened, preventative measures and results have been far stronger." In summary, Black says the main elements of a successful health and safety policy are: to avoid a tick box mentality; to read, understand and implement guidance; challenge current processes; clearly communicate and adopt the right behaviour; learn from mistakes and ensure practises are delivering. He recommends HSE book INDG343 Directors Responsibilities for Health & Safety (which can be found at this: www.hse.gov.uk/pubns/indg343.pdf). Other guidance can be found at: www.hse.gov.uk/pubns/manindex.htm

Mountains and molehills Duncan Spencer, safety manager at the John Lewis partnership, said the crucial element to a successful H&S policy is to distinguish mountains from molehills. "We're retailers not the construction industry, how do we pragmatically apply the regulations in context without going over the top?" The same could be said for many sectors.

Spencer's view is that, with regulations "spewing out of government", millions of risks could theoretically end up as a hazard. "The point is, where do you stop? A few years ago John Lewis stores ended up with 700 risk hazards/assessments – which is unmanageable. The key thing is to assess and identify the hazards from a taskbased point of view and prioritise: What do people and partners do in their job? Which jobs have significant risk? It's a case of getting your ducks in a row." He says Waitrose' current system leaves them with around 80 risk assessments.

Once identified and minimised, Spencer then says it's a case of training and appropriate kit.

Questioning the approach, a delegate stated that, no matter how careful and thorough a risk assessment is, if you miss something inadvertently, you are always at fault.

Spencer dismissed this. "The approach is to show you've thought about the risk, deemed it insignificant and only put 'real' risks on the system.

And the system is reviewed. If you have checking processes in place you can say to the HSE 'Thanks for pointing that out we'll get back to you in a week'.

Or you can say 'No, we've considered it and deemed it insignificant'." John Holland of the HSE concurred. "We want to protect life, not stop it from happening.

It's vital to implement a logical system but you're probably never going to hit everything. Revisit, and review sensibly. It's a live process not a one off." Another retailer questioned the panel over inconsistencies in regional HSE Inspectorates.

Spencer said the British Retail Consortium is pushing for an appeal procedure. He said this may help 'weed out' overzealous regional agencies.

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