11 January 2010
Louis Wustemann

February’s event at Surrey’s Sandown Park features a free seminar programme organised by the British Safety Council and endorsed by the IIRSM.

Now in its fourth year, the Health and Safety South event has attracted high-profile speakers to its free seminar programme. Nattasha Freeman is the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health’s (IOSH) immediate past president. Her seminar, titled The Sustainability of the Health Agenda, will highlight the most prevalent causes of work-related sickness absence.

She will also talk about presenteeism, barriers to return to work and the changing demographic of the working population. Currently director for health and safety at Phoenix Beard property consultants in Birmingham, Freeman has worked in health, safety and environmental management for 15 years, in areas including the railway, construction and
commercial sectors.

Another IOSH past president, Neil Budworth, corporate health and safety manager at E.ON UK, will build on Freeman’s presentation by looking at health and safety professionals’ contribution to occupational health management. Budworth promises to show delegates how to reduce sickness absence, save money and be loved by your boss in one easy lesson!

The presentation will include practical examples to help drive positive health in a business. It will also examine the practical outputs of the 2009 pilot sponsored by IOSH and the Department for Work and Pensions of a short course to give health and safety managers the skills to support health management and will look at what safety and health professionals can do day to day, to make a positive impact on employee health.

First up on the second day of the event is Malcolm Tullet, managing director of Risks and Safety Plus, who will present the intriguingly titled Stop Doing Health and Safety. Tullet is passionate about how organisations manage their risks and argues that we need straightforward integrated processes that ensure that people are healthy and safe at work as a matter of course, rather than a culture that presents health and safety as a necessary evil.  People should not be “doing” health and safety, he will argue, it should be embedded into everyday work activities without managers even having to think about it.

All join in

Also on the second day Nigel Bryson looks at effective worker involvement, one of the main strands of the HSE’s new strategy for health and safety improvement. Bryson, a former head of health and safety at the GMB union, believes that people support what they help create and that effective worker involvement improves both health and safety standards and business performance. Using examples from successful initiatives, he will present key methods and techniques for effective worker involvement.

Early visitors on the Tuesday, who missed the HSW/IIRSM joint conference in Birmingham in November can hear Lawrence Waterman, head of safety for the Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) recap on his thoughts on how the construction industry is meeting the challenges of the 2012 project. Waterman’s story of the efforts of the ODA and its major contractors to keep the biggest construction project in Europe on time while maintaining safety and occupational health standards associated with lower-risk sectors is an impressive one, especially as the East London site reaches the peak of construction activity.

At the far end of the seminar programme, the final session on the second day will be hosted by Simon Joyston-Bechel, a partner at lawyers Pinsent Masons, who will highlight new risks in health and safety, and include an update on sentencing trends. He will also cover the concept of personal liability and the significance of setting the right tone at the top of an organisation.

As well as the issue-based seminars there is also a separate programme of practical presentations covering perennial health and safety problems and a substantial exhibition where major equipment vendors, service providers and distributors all have experts available to answer queries.

For the full programme, or to register in advance for the seminars, click here or call the event helpline on 0870 4866816

Categories:
Training, Features

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