Protect what matters - September 24

MENTAL HEALTH is increasingly recognised as a crucial factor of an organisation’s strategy and was highlighted in RS’ 2024 health and safety report, Striving for Excellence. More than 850 health and safety professionals who completed RS’ survey, which formed the basis of its new report, showed 55 per cent of companies are confident in their mental health capabilities. This statistic was up from 52 per cent the previous year, but still behind physical harm (81%), PPE selection (80%) and disease prevention (69%).

“This is fundamentally important,” said Dr Karen McDonnell, occupational health and safety policy adviser at the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA). “Businesses need to recognise that employees are people with whole lives. 

“There are situations that happen outside of work that they will ‘bring to work’ with them, like financial pressures, interpersonal relationships, not sleeping well and arriving tired at work. There need to be systems and structures in place to support employees, including those working in health and safety-related roles.” 

Barnacle-Bowd highlighted the issue in male-dominated workforces, where discussing mental health is less common. He believes the lower confidence in handling mental health may stem from it being managed by HR in some organisations. And he advocates for health and safety teams to identify and address mental health issues.

“Historically, health and safety professionals have focused on physical health, but progressive safety professionals are now considering mental health,” he said. “We need to get the safety team and the people on the shopfloor trained on how to identify mental health issues. Poor mental health can lead to accidents.”

Organisations are positive about their health and safety capabilities, but it is crucial to prevent complacency and ensure issues like mental health receive due attention.

Warning against complacency 

The report found that most organisations are confident in their basic safety measures. Almost nine in 10 respondents said they feel highly capable in protecting employees (88%) and end-users (89%), with 80 per cent rating their systems, reporting, leadership and governance for Environment, Health and Safety (EHS) at a high level.

Ryan Plummer, senior director at RS Safety Solutions, said this was reassuring, but warned against over-confidence. He also emphasised the importance of maintaining an elevated level of compliance and taking health and safety seriously.

“If you’re 100 per cent confident, then complacency can set in,” said Plummer. “And that doesn’t take into account issues like staff turnover or new equipment, which means you have to change processes or the type of PPE you use.”.

Barnacle-Bowd stressed the risk of complacency with practices like tracking days since the last accident. 

“That can lead to complacency because people think they’re safe,” he said. 

His advice is for organisations to bring in people from outside who can provide a fresh perspective on any health and safety issues. 

“You have to be completely honest with yourself,” he said. “We’re starting an audit process for our distribution centres and I’m not having people audit their own work. We had an audit in Corby last month and I brought an employee who does safety in EMEA over from Germany to do the audit. It’s a new person with a fresh set of eyes. 

“Everyone who does safety has different skill sets and will see different things from their own experience. That can help to break any complacency.”

Download the 2024 Health and Safety Report: Striving for Excellence

John Barnacle-Bowd is vice president of global health, safety and environment at RS. For more information, visit https://uk.rs-online.com/web/