In 2011 the New York Times reported that the Santa Cruz police department arrested two women in a downtown car park. One for possession of illegal drugs, the other had outstanding warrants, both were peering into car windows when the police arrived. What was unusual about the incident was the fact that the police were alerted by a computer program … Read More
Realigning Health and Safety in the Business
Over the last year or so we’ve posited ideas around having health and safety become a keystone habit in the business and aligning health and safety outcomes with business growth and why doing so was important. We highlighted three categorisations for how health and safety is viewed within the business: as a cost centre as delivering business benefits as a … Read More
So, is Numerology Bunkum?
At the end of last year we welcomed in 2020 with a cheerful note on what we had to look forward in this year of symmetrical numbers. We cheerily looked at the positives we, as a health and safety industry, could take from Brexit, Data/Technology and Wellness, and did this with the backdrop of the Numerologists’ view that 2020 would … Read More
Aligning Health and Safety With Business Growth (Part 2 of 2)
In the first part of this two-part post, we discussed why health and safety needs to be aligned with the growth of the business and, at all costs, to avoid being seen as a cost centre. How do we, therefore, make health and safety a keystone habit? Something the business obsesses over and which, ultimately, becomes the engine of business … Read More
Aligning Health and Safety With Business Growth (Part 1 of 2)
In our last post on the changing role of the Health and Safety Manager we posited that there is an ever increasing requirement for the H&S Manager to justify their existence and that the most enduring way to provide this justification is to align health and safety performance with the growth of the business. The alternatives to aligning with growth … Read More
The H&S (Swiss Army Knife) Manager
In the heat of the summer of 2018, we discussed how technology could become the rallying call to attract younger people into the health and safety profession. Eighteen months on we revisit the subject, but more broadly with the remit of exploring the changing role of the Health and Safety Manager. The original post coincided with SHP’s launch of New … Read More
Flexible Working and Finnish Trust
I don’t know what the commute is like in Finland but I doubt it comes close to that suffered by the majority of us in the UK. Yet, while the Finns brought the latest version of their Working Hours Act into effect on Jan 1, 2020, I spent 3 hours driving the 50 miles to Southampton last week through the … Read More
Ruminating Cows, Trojan Horses and More Reasons to be Cheerful in 2020
This is the third in the trilogy of posts taking an optimistic look at UK health and safety issues in 2020. The first focused on Brexit, the second on the role that data and technology can play in improving health and safety outcomes, while this one is all about ruminating cows and trojan horses [really? – Ed]. OK, seriously, we’ll … Read More
2020 Vision – More Reasons to be Cheerful
In our last post of 2019, we started this trilogy of optimistic looks into UK health and safety in 2020. This post, the second of the three, focuses on the optimism afforded by data and technology. Are we talking about using data and technology in isolation? As a replacement for human reasoning? No. Or, data and technology as an adjunct … Read More
2020 Vision – 3 Reasons to be Cheerful
2020 has the look of a great year. Just the numbers laid out beside each other. 2019 appeared awkward (and it was, very) but 2020 has a calming, hopeful look to it. It’s an Olympic year and there’s something Olympian about the way the numbers sit on the page. I’ve never studied Numerology but I Googled ‘2020’ and, sure enough, … Read More
Let’s Hope this Post Helps You Sleep
It’s not every health and safety blog post that links Baader-Meinhof, Inspector Morse and has the express intent of helping you sleep, but this one does. The post’s genesis is in the seeming deluge of articles on driver safety over the past few weeks. Driver safety is an extremely important topic with the focus here being on driving for work … Read More
Megatrends, Wellness and Safety
Buried in our Halloween post were some wellness and safety ideas that came out of the latest Euromonitor International megatrends analysis and which deserve expansion here. Firstly, the megatrends analysis. What is it? It’s a lifestyle survey of 1,000+ people in each of 40 countries, conducted annually and aimed at identifying the megatrends shaping consumer markets. These megatrends are driven … Read More
What Can We Learn When We Include Member of Public Fatalities?
In our last post, which focused on the Transportation & Storage sector, we highlighted the number of workplace fatal injuries to members of the public and stated that “if you add in the member of public fatalities [to worker fatalities], Transportation & Storage accounts for by far the most fatalities with 66 in 2017/18, exactly double that of the next … Read More
The Rise of the Machines: The Good, The Bad and the Grey Goo
The IOSH Future Leader Conference is taking place on November 5th and includes a session titled ‘Robots: meet your new colleagues’, by health and safety consultant Bridget Leathley. This should be a really interesting examination of the benefits that robots and cobots (robot co-workers) can bring to occupational health and safety. The Future Leaders Conference is aimed at those new … Read More
Which Camp Are YOU In?
Have you chosen sides in the Heinrich/Dekker debate yet? Zero Harm vs. Safety Differently? Focussing on the incident/accident data of what’s gone wrong rather than working on what’s gone right? People are the problem vs. people are the solution? I do hope not because the chances are that they’re both right and that breaking through the statistical plateau (that is … Read More
Fatigue, Driving and Regulations
During my mother-in-law’s last few years of failing health, I had the pleasure of meeting one of her home care helpers. I watched her bubbly personality cook, tidy-up and put a smile on a frail old lady – all in her 15-20 minute allowed visit time. As she dashed for the door, I asked her where she was going next … Read More
