Healthy and safe?
3 mins read
Health and safety, said Steve Hughes on BBC's <i>Comedy Roadshow</i>, is what we used to call common sense. However, it exists for a reason – nobody wants to go to work and endanger themselves or their colleagues. Equally there can be substantial penalties for falling foul of the law and, if something does goes wrong, ignorance is no defence.
Small companies, particularly those that were founded and are managed by engineers with a focus on technology, may not have considered health and safety as an issue. However it is. Greg Davies, Head of Service Development at Assurity Consulting, commented: "Depending on severity of an incident, if a company is deemed to have not fulfilled its duty of care to staff, visitors, contractors or others, then fines can be levied against the company and/or individuals within the company. Such failures can include things you did that could have caused an injury, or things you didn't that could have prevented it." There doesn't even need to be a incident where someone is hurt - a care home was recently fined £40,000 for repeatedly not doing risk assessments.
There will be a person, usually the owner, who is the ultimate duty holder for health and safety and it is this person with whom the buck stops, although some responsibilities may be delegated to heads of department, for example. However, Davies stresses: "The regulations are not designed to be onerous – they are just there to protect staff and so ensure that you get the best out of them which is obviously very important when you are talking about highly technical, well paid and highly skilled design engineers. Good health and safety benefits everybody, and it doesn't happen by accident."
"It is all about compliance. If you have had nothing in place historically then it is as well to recognise that, regard it as a point in time and decide what needs to be done going forward. In health and safety issues the reverse burden of proof also applies – you are guilty unless you can prove your innocence! So you need to be able to demonstrate what you have done to limit the risks. It shouldn't be difficult – it is really about identifying the hazards and what risk they offer – that is the starting point for your risk assessment.
Depending on your relationship with your place of work (owner, tenant, subtenant), the activities or processes you undertake (design, manufacture, admin, etc) and the people you interact with (visitors, contractors, suppliers and others as well as your employees) will determine the types of risk assessment and controls you may need. Many of these assessments, could be done in-house and there is plenty of advice and downloadable sample forms and documents on the Health and Safety Executive's web site (www.hse.gov.uk). For some of the more specialist aspects however (fire, asbestos and Legionella for example) then you may need some outside support."
In a typical design environment possibly one of the biggest issues could simply be providing a comfortable environment for engineers to work on their designs. The Health and Safety (Display Screen Equipment) Regulations 1992, originating from the European Union, tackle this issue. Sometimes called 'DSE' and often referred to as 'workstation assessments', they aim to protect the health of people who work with this equipment. Information from the HSE identifies a high proportion of DSE workers reporting aches, pains or eye discomfort. These aches and pains are sometimes called upper limb disorders (ULDs), which can include a range of medical conditions such as RSI (repetitive strain injury). Work related musculoskeletal disorders, such as those that can arise from manual handling and DSE work, are most common among the manual and skilled occupations and accounted for the loss of 7.5 million working days in 2011/12
The workstation assessment covers a broad range of areas from the physical aspects of the screen, desk and chair, the tasks being performed, to the interaction with the computer – it helps insure operators are not just as safe as possible but also so that they are as productive as possible. Supporting information on the DSE Regulations gives guidance on control measures including, the height of the screen, how far away the screen and the keyboard should be away, how to set up a chair, whether or not to use document holders etc. It is not intended to tell everyone to do it the same way; it is to show people how to do it in the way that best suits them safely and practically.
Equally care is needed when applying control measures. Using the DSE theme, some people may need wrist and/or foot rests to aid them, however such items can become fads – if they I have one I want one too. What happens then is the employer invests in dozens of foot and wrist rest only for them to become quickly discarded (as the user didn't really need them and now finds them a hindrance) and they end up in a store cupboard somewhere. A solution is to let someone try one for a week or two rather then just purchasing one for everybody. If they find it of benefit then provide one permanently, if not then pass it on to the next person to try.
Davies said: "It is about people working together – ultimately people don't want to cause themselves problems and employers don't want to put their employees at risk. It is just a case of everyone understanding the issues so that they can be dealt with. Compensation culture is a lot less common than you would think – most people still believe in a good days pay for a good days work.
