09 June 2008
Jocelyn Dorrell

Ever wondered what's the fastest way to irritate an HSE inspector visiting your site? Or perhaps you're still struggling to convince your managing director that the new corporate killing law is an issue for them personally, not just a clarification of existing law?

Delegates to the Royal Society for the Preventions of Accidents' (RoSPA's) conferences got insights into these and other topical questions over the three days of the Safety and Health Expo from 13 to 15 May, and HSW was in the audience to note the best of the advice on offer.

Leadership action

For any delegates who got to the end of RoSPA's directors' duties conference still unconvinced of the importance of senior management leadership in the new corporate manslaughter era, barrister Gerard Forlin had two stark messages.

First, the idea that an insurance policy or contingency fund will buy you out of a corporate killing conviction unscathed is fiction. Sentencing is going to "go through the roof", he said: the current average fine of one-seven-hundredth of domestic profit could soar to 10% of world annual turnover if Sentencing Advisory Panel (SAP) proposals are adopted (sentencing guidelines are expected in the autumn). And, "if the judge is feeling mischievous", the reputational and stock market damage caused by adverse publicity orders could be severe.

Second, while the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act does not provide for sanctions against individuals, neglectful directors should not breathe too easy. "Prosecutions will be easier [under the new law]," explained Forlin, "therefore lots more people will be involved, as witnesses and so on." This, and the fact that the police will be handling prosecutions and they have powers of arrest, mean that individuals will be in the spotlight as never before.

Fear factor

Of course, fear of prosecution is not the best reason for looking after employees' safety, and much of what came earlier in the day was about promoting positive attitudes and learning from the best. RoSPA chair Tom Mullarkey set the tone in his opening address when he said "you can't have a culture driven by fear" but should strive for a positive culture, based on shared objectives.

Chair of the HSE Judith Hackitt agreed, playing down the importance of the fear factor in encouraging compliance with the law. Challenging the argument that an increase in inspector numbers would bring an increase in compliance, Hackitt said she didn't "subscribe to that assumption", arguing instead that "directors must truly believe" that leading on health and safety is the right thing to do. The HSE will enforce where necessary, she said, but it's important to maintain a balance.

Promoting the role of safety professionals, Hackitt had a simple message for directors: "We're asking you to lead, not to be the experts... But you cannot devolve responsibility [to health and safety managers]."

She urged directors not to "manage from the boardroom" but to get out on site and check what was happening for themselves. On a practical note, she argued in favour of linking pay and benefits and career progression to safety performance. She rejected the notion that there was a choice to be made between productivity and safety, and said that a link between pay and safety performance can help "ensure there are no contradictory messages" about what is expected of supervisors.

Returning to the theme of "doing the right thing for the right reasons", she called on directors to go the extra mile: "Compliance is important, of course it is," she concluded. "But it is the minimum you need to do, and not the reason for doing it."

The EEF's director of health, safety and environment Gary Booton reflected that "we should be selling health and safety as a competitive advantage."

Board to shop floor

Neil Lennox, group head of health, safety and fire at Sainsbury's, talked about the need for good leadership to cascade safety responsibility throughout an organisation, so that "safety is not something I do, it's something we do."

He recalled a training session where he asked a group of 15 managers questions about their stores. Every delegate could reel off the previous day's sales figures, but only one of the 15 could say with confidence whether there had been any accidents.

A staff suggestion scheme at the supermarket chain has seen a good response from employees on safety improvements, with 100 staff ideas already implemented. The challenge is to integrate safety thinking, Lennox said; "Health and safety is not just a support function - it's fundamental in what we do."

Susan Elston, regional director at Aramark Offshore, described how the offshore-services company has gone about extending good practice and accountability into the supply chain. She explained how the firm, which provides hotel, catering and FM services to the offshore industry, seeks to establish relationships with suppliers that go beyond buyer/seller - where the only contact might be the invoice and annual audit - so Aramark "gets to understand the risks they're bringing to us."

Aramark now employs contract analysts, not just buyers, who scrutinise contractual arrangements and "articulate very carefully our health and safety
expectations."

The firm holds an annual supplier partner safety forum, where the emphasis is on discussion rather than data. The critical thing is sharing information, said Elston; "We try to avoid lots of charts and statistics."

If a supplier is critical to Aramark's business but its safety management is lacking, Aramark will work with the firm to bring it up to the standard expected. That said, the firm takes "a low-tolerance attitude" to poor performers: "Not all marriages are made in heaven," she concluded.

Suits and uniforms

The Institute of Directors/Health and Safety Commission guidance on leading health and safety at work, published at the end of last year, turned up in many of the presentations.

Judith Hackitt - who warned in April that legal duties for directors would be back on the table if the voluntary approach wasn't effective - said the HSE will be using the guidance in inspections, while Gerard Forlin said it would be "a noose around the board's neck if you aren't familiar with it."

Forlin conceded that no one really knows how the Corporate Manslaughter Act will be used - and won't possibly for several years until cases have reached the Court of Appeal or even the House of Lords. But he warned that removal of the "controlling mind" test changes things dramatically.

Before April, "it was impossible to get a large organisation", he said, because unless a director went round wearing t-shirt saying "I don't care about sending kids up chimneys, I just want to make money" it was very difficult to identify an individual with direct responsibility.

Now, though, prosecutors can aggregate factors such as a failure to train workers or poor supervision, and juries will look at a firm's corporate culture.
Whatever the levels of fine imposed on guilty firms (and RoSPA's Roger Bibbings was blunt in his assessment of some of the SAP's proposals as "pretty draconian"), the Corporate Manslaughter Act is now with us, and Forlin had a word of warning for directors: "Juries don't like suits and uniforms."

Managing site transport risks

If firms are struggling with director leadership, they were on more familiar ground at RoSPA's conference on workplace transport, which focused on the - often very simple - measures that can be taken to mitigate transport risks.

The previous day, Gerard Forlin had echoed other legal experts when he warned that work-related driving fatalities could offer up the first corporate manslaughter prosecutions. Opening the workplace transport conference on Wednesday, RoSPA chair Tom Mullarkey picked up where Forlin had left off, calling for a "melding" of police and HSE expertise to properly address at-work road safety.

Carol Grainger, the HSE's workplace transport programme manager, confirmed that while it has been difficult to get reliable statistics on work-related road accidents in the past, it's now standard procedure for the police to ask an injured person whether their journey had been for work purposes. "HSE can now collect this information," she said, "and we will be able to use it."

Back to base

A recurrent theme was the importance of effective management in reducing site transport risks. Grainger gave the example of safety manager of a well-known business who rang her for advice.

The manager had three sites of similar size and layout, with similar vehicles and similar safe systems of work, but wildly different accident records: one was very good, one passable, and one "disastrous". The manager couldn't work out why their results were so different so called in the Health and Safety Laboratory (HSL).

The HSL identified that the difference lay in the attitude of the supervisor of the main warehouse and loading bay. At the best site, the supervisor was a "stickler" for procedure, insisting on good order, pre-shift vehicle checks, and so on. At the average site the supervisor was doing a competent job, though "his heart and soul weren't in it".

At the poor site, the supervisor had recently been promoted into the job and hadn't been properly trained; "He wanted to be one of the folk on the shopfloor," said Grainger, and wasn't prepared to enforce rules.

"Management and supervision are the key to bringing your accident rates down," she said. "If a driver deliberately exceeds a speed limit, they've got to know that something will happen. And you have to make [those penalties] clear at the beginning."

Grainger made a special plea for LGV drivers, an "at-risk occupation" accounting for 14% of all workplace transport injuries (the second highest after handling and storage).

She pointed out that lorry drivers are often strangers on the sites they visit, and may be at risk if they have nowhere to wait when they get out of their cabs. She urged firms to consider introducing designated areas and facilities: "I would commend site managers to think about them; you can make a big difference."

See the signs?

Jayn Johnson, an HSE inspector for more than 30 years, had some straightforward advice for firms wanting to get off to the right start during an inspection: put a clear sign on the building with your company name, or your unit number on an industrial estate.

"If I've got to phone you up to find your premises," she warned, "you're not off to a very good start."

Inspectors are looking for defined routes, good surfaces, clear segregation and marked crossings, said Johnson, adding that she'll often have a look round to get a general impression of the site as she arrives.

"You can identify the bottom end quite easily," she said, "and inspectors will start asking questions if they see things like tatty vehicles."

For those at a loss where to start with workplace transport risk assessment, Johnson recommended drawing up a simple site plan and marking all the important things: where the private cars are parked, where the workplace vehicles are, where pedestrians move about. It should then become obvious fairly quickly where the potentially dangerous areas are.

Actually watching what's happening on site can be illuminating, she added. In her experience, when she has asked a manager to observe an unloading operation, for example, they can usually spot the safety issues immediately.

When it comes to supervision, "CCTV can be wonderfully useful for monitoring behaviour," noted Johnson. Not only can you watch security videos of loading and unloading operations to check procedures are being followed, but you can also check pedestrians are sticking to the correct areas and even calculate the speed of fork-lift trucks.

Read all about it

A dramatic example of how useful CCTV footage can be came in the afternoon's next presentation.

Tom Bennett, health and safety manager with Menzies Distribution, showed the audience real footage of an accident at one of the firm's sites in March 2002 in which a fork-lift truck overturned after being struck by a lorry. The driver escaped serious injury, but the incident could easily have been fatal and prompted a far-reaching review of the company's site management policies.

The choice was between treating the incident as a local problem and applying a quick fix, or treating it as a wake-up call, explained Bennett, and they chose the latter route. Working with the Freight Transport Association, Menzies - which handles 50 million newspapers and magazines each week, with 1500 vehicles covering 93,000 miles a day - introduced "12 principles of workplace transport": a safe system of work applied at every site. The principles include eliminating vehicle activity wherever possible; restricting all non-essential personnel; providing adequate physical barriers to minimise the risk of vehicles hitting pedestrians; and training for all staff.

The hardest part, Bennett recalled, was getting supervisors on side as the principles were introduced. "They're big macho supervisors dealing with HGV drivers every day," he explained, "and they didn't want necessarily to explain to someone what they did and why."

That said, Bennett would recommend the Menzies approach. "Anyone can do it," he argued. "I defy anyone not to be able to use the 12 principles."

Categories:
Construction, Professional Skills, Article, Workplace transport



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