Protect what matters – October 2025

What are the numbers from the health and safety report showing about how confident organisations feel about protecting their employees?

As well as the slight drop in overall confidence in ability to protect employees, there has been a fall in those rating the wider attitude towards managing EHS in their organisation as high or very high. It is now at 80 per cent, versus 84 per cent this previous year. 

Meanwhile, seven in 10 (72%) describe the overall safety culture in their business as high or very high, which is also lower than the previous year, where it stood at 76 per cent.

The report highlighted the drop in confidence around organisations’ attitudes towards health and safety was reflected in specific risk areas, like confidence in ability to protect from physical harm, disease or infection. The decline featured across those areas.

What could the contributory factors be to the confidence decline?

One key contributory factor could be around budget restrictions. After the big focus on PPE that the pandemic spurred, in the following years professionals have been expected to do more with less. This can impact their confidence in ability to protect.

Additionally, workplace accidents remain high, with the Health and Safety Executive’s (HSE) Health and Safety at Work 2024 report showing 138 fatalities from work-related incidents, and 604,000 people injured. Around 33.7 million working days were estimated as lost due to work-related injury or illness. These figures could be in the minds of EHS professionals and when faced with less resource and restricted budgets, can impact confidence in ability to protect.

What are the risks of dwindling budgets or under-investment in H&S?

It’s obvious that investment in anything is needed to maintain or improve on performance, and this is certainly the case in health and safety. Budget cuts could be hitting areas like systems and training.

It’s a short-term approach to cut budgets or not adequately invest in these areas, as the cost of a health and safety-related incident can be far higher. Costs can be incurred through covering employees who may be off work as a result of work-related injury, then the cost of loss of production, and the reputation of the business among stakeholders and end users.

Around only half of people surveyed stated they felt confident in helping and protecting staff in the area of mental health. Why is it important and how can organisations focus more on this area?

Some 776,000 workers in 2023-24 were said to be suffering from work-related stress, depression or anxiety, according to the Health and Safety Executive. And it’s an issue that affects some sectors more than others. In construction, for instance, suicide rates are much higher than the national average, with figures from the Mates in Mind charity citing it as 3.7 times higher. 

The disparity may be because organisations are unclear about the solutions they can provide in this area. But they should treat it as they would with any other business risk factor. While some organisations may feel it’s adequate to simply train and appoint some mental health first-aiders – which is a valuable element – it must go beyond this tactic to include an on-going approach to properly support employees. It’s key for any organisation to be an empathetic and compassionate employer, to both support in the area of mental health and also to help employee retention in an area that has skills shortages.

Is there an issue of complacency culture adding to the confidence levels among health and safety professionals?

Our report indicated that health and safety professionals are less confident in their organisation’s ability to protect workers, and are faced with some cost-cutting pressures and fears of complacency. 

Identifying weaker EHS areas within the organisation and initiating steps to raise awareness of why it’s an important area is crucial. EHS professionals should also undertake a thorough mental health risk assessment to uncover the size of the issue for the organisation, and look to develop a mental health strategy in accordance with the risk. Fostering a culture where people feel comfortable in raising any issues they may have is also important so they feel supported. Finally, EHS professionals must be prepared to make the case against cutting back on initiatives and warn about the risks of complacency.

The full RS Health and Safety 2025 Report can be downloaded here.

Neil Griffiths is site director at RS Safety Solutions. For more information, visit https://uk.rs-online.com/web/