Protect what matters – January 2026

ONLY 51 per cent of respondents to this year’s report labelled their environmental, health and safety (EHS) maturity level as medium – a slight fall from last year’s 54 per cent. I believe this number is too low and quite concerning. From a health and safety perspective, everyone should be striving to have a higher maturity level to improve EHS within the workplace. 

The consistent year-on-year decline in organisations reporting accident prevention, fire prevention, mental health support and cultural change strategies is also disappointing. This decline could be due to several factors. One critical element could be the fact the cost of employment has gone up significantly. The pressure on the same resources to deliver more continues. The evolution of the role of EHS professionals has expanded and now requires a greater breadth of skills, understanding, impact and duty to influence within an organisation. It has also grown to include areas like mental health support – and rightly so. 

Cultural change can help reverse a maturity decline 

To reverse the maturity level decline, cultural change is crucial. Recruiting with the right cultural fit, not only breadth of knowledge, is becoming key. However, the report showed that more than half of organisations (55%) have a cultural change initiative. For me, what stands out here is more about the 45 per cent that don’t!

I am passionate about cultural change and the positive impact it can have on an organisation. EHS teams will struggle on their own to drive up maturity levels, and must work in partnership with whole management team: only a partnership model can drive change. When EHS professionals or teams try to drive health and safety initiatives and processes alone, employees can feel like it’s something that is being done to them rather than something they’re actively involved in. It must be embedded in every way of working within the organisation rather than being an agenda item.

Training and development was cited in the report as having the biggest impact on how well employees comply with EHS requirements, by 69 per cent of respondents. But two-thirds (66%) point to workplace culture. If you get it right, culture change has a more significant effect than putting employees through any training course.

EHS professionals should work towards building strong partnership with managers to deliver change so that the importance of EHS within the organisation is driven throughout the whole organisation, not only from one department. Responsibility for health and safety should be promoted among all colleagues: encouraging them to spot hazards or unsafe working practices – as well as reporting near misses – is a great way to drive up maturity. Organisations need to cultivate an instinct in all employees to keeping themselves and others around them safe. Communicating health and safety successes will also help create positivity around the topic. 

In the case of small to medium-sized enterprises, resource needed to implement culture change initiatives can be a barrier to doing so. They could be focusing on cost control and may believe it will consume resource, be too large a task to execute, or simply too costly to do so. However the steps can be relatively basic; it’s about everyone in the business taking it seriously and how it’s embedded throughout any company. Having a good health and safety culture is also appealing for customers, so businesses not focusing enough on this area could really be missing a trick. 

EHS professionals undoubtedly have a challenging job ensuring the safety of employees and inspiring them to be actively involved in it. Seeking out partnerships, both within the organisation and with suppliers and solutions providers who can help them in their quest, can help support this ongoing mission.

To explore the key findings further, download the RS Health & Safety Report at https://tinyurl.com/6xnt9ywf

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