Health & safety committees: RoSPA wants to hear from you

RoSPA wants to hear the views of health and safety committees up and down the country as it seeks to pin down what is needed for the effective leadership of accident and ill health prevention by line managers and team leaders.

After the national focus on the duties of directors and senior managers, RoSPA is turning the spotlight on what makes for the effective leadership of health and safety by those in operational management roles.

Over the next two months, committees are invited to take time at one of their regular meetings to discuss the matter, based on their practical experiences, and to send RoSPA five or six key points or suggestions.

Roger Bibbings, occupational safety adviser at the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents, said: “This is our next big project in influencing the direction of the UK's occupational safety and health policy.

“There are clear legal duties for those at the top of an organisation to lead, but the development of a healthy and safe working culture depends critically on the role played by line managers. As well as ensuring that directors and senior managers are fully involved, we want to focus down on to what team leaders need to feel, think, know, say and do to ensure that board level health and safety objectives are met at workplace level.”

RoSPA would like to hear from as many health and safety committees as possible about what characterises a good line manager or team leader when it comes to health and safety e.g. do they lead by example and are they always willing to listen to the concerns of their colleagues?

In July, RoSPA plans to collate all the ideas received and an exploratory seminar will be held in September to consider the responses and identify key issues and how they can be shared. One idea the charity wants to test is whether there is a need for a consensus definition of core actions and supporting good practices that might sit alongside the existing guidance for directors (Leading Health and Safety at Work, INDG 417). A web area and series of master classes are two potential outlets for sharing the project findings.

Please send responses by Friday, July 9 to Roger Bibbings at rbibbings@rospa.com. Details of the Big Workplace Discussion are available at: www.rospa.com/WorkplaceSafety/BigWorkplaceDiscussion/