Health and safety: getting the right balance

Back in June, the new prime minister tasked Lord Young with reviewing the operation of health and safety laws and the growth of the compensation culture. Puzzled or critical voices were scarcely audible above the applause. Nowadays, a dropped aitch and an exasperated shrug seem almost mandatory in any discussion of 'elf and safety'. They cement a bond that allows common perceptions to go almost unchallenged. Despite regular protests from the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), the majority still insists that over-regulation takes the adventure out of life, stops school trips, sticks goggles on kids playing conkers and – tragically – lets a child drown because potential rescuers haven't done the right training course. So when Lord Young pledged to restore "common sense" over regulation through a "system that is proportionate and not bureaucratic," there weren't too many people asking how – or even if – it was necessary. Three months on and the bonfire of the regulations looks more like faint singeing. According to various leaks, we can expect some much-needed relaxation of the restrictions on the emergency services and removal of threats of legal action against people "only trying to help". There should also be less paperwork for those trying to organise school trips or village fetes. Apart from that, however, the lordly guns appear to be pointed largely at the ambulance chasers, those law firms supposedly making a fortune out of no-win, no-fee personal injury claims, despite the fact that the numbers of such legal actions have been falling over the past decade. In essence, it seems the bulk of health and safety regulation will remain largely unchanged. Why? Well, at a practical level, it's difficult to see how it could be otherwise since most of it is enshrined in European rather than UK legislation. Like it or not, it has been framed to ensure common safety standards across the EU and any attempted renegotiation would go down very badly. But secondly – and more tentatively – could it be because of a dawning realisation that there is good reason for much of the legislation? What seems ludicrous in an office could well be a matter of life and death in a steel plant. Certainly, HSE feels hard done by. In a letter to Lord Young welcoming the review, chair Judith Hackitt said: "We in HSE have been saying for some time that health and safety is being used by too many as a convenient excuse to hide behind." HSE has been running a myth of the month campaign since 2007, hitting back at some of the ridiculous decisions wrongly blamed on H&S. It is adamant it is often invoked to disguise someone's real motives – concerns over costs or complexity, or an unwillingness to honestly defend an unpopular decision. Karen Baxter, MD of Sypol which provides workplace risk management services, points the finger of blame elsewhere: "Generally speaking, it's the insurers who stop people doing things by putting in hundreds of unnecessary clauses which might, at some time in the future, avoid them paying a claim, together with the under-trained, confused and unconfident managers who have to go along with it." It's ironic that safety legislation can result in such overkill. Michelle Di Gioia, H&S expert with commercial solicitors Thomas Eggar, points out the basic flaw: "The law currently puts all the onus on the employer to carry out a risk assessment where they are liable for imagining and protecting against every conceivable risk." They therefore spend undue amounts of time and money worrying about what might never happen. Lawrence Webb, Sypol's head of operations, sees this so often: "Companies have gone so unbelievably over the top that they haven't actually made a decision about anything – all they have done is introduce a whole lot of systems and paperwork hoping the decision will be made by itself." Jim Lythgow, director at Specsavers Corporate Eyecare has a telling anecdote about this extreme attitude. Employers have a basic duty to provide staff working at VDUs with suitable single vision spectacles for their working distance. One company decided to cut through any ambiguity while complying with the absolute letter of the regulations. They prohibited all other glasses and asked the wearers to attach theirs to their computer screen with a 70cm length of string so they could only be used for the purpose for which they had been bought. Webb maintains there is a real lack of education about H&S: "Everybody should be able to deal with the real risks without fearing someone hovering over them like a vulture waiting for them to get it wrong. What is needed is some reality. If you focus too much on the negatives, you will end up introducing so many procedures and triple checks that you will forget what you wanted to achieve in the first place. People just don't understand the basics because they are so wrapped up in the detail. In worrying about what could happen if it all goes wrong, they miss the chance to get it right." To Webb, behaviours and cultures are the key: "If people don't understand why they need to do something in a specific way instead of taking an obvious short cut, all the procedures in the world won't stop them taking it. People actually do unsafe things with the best of intentions." He believes managers need proper education – whether through bodies like IOSH and NEBOSH or organisations like his own – not just to understand the bigger picture but to search out the things that really apply to them. "Legislation is just there to set a minimum standard, a place to start. It leaves it up to the company to decide how to get there. And interpretation and sensible application can be the hardest things." Phrases like "where reasonably practicable" were introduced to make managers go through a sensible decision-making process, but it is the one people struggle with most. "The difficulty is always "have I done enough?" If you think you have, stop, monitor it, and if it needs improvement, go back to it. And if it needs slimming down, have the confidence to do it. It's not always about building things up – if it's not adding value, don't do it." So how do manufacturers cope in practice, finding a safe, sensible H&S regime that complies with the legislation without drowning under the load? Let's look at the Pocklington plant of Yara UK, a business that went, in one fell swoop, from unclassified to a top-tier site under the Control of Major Accident Hazards (COMAH) regulations. Its positive, sensible approach to what could have been an overwhelming upheaval is one of the many reasons why it was highly commended in the 2010 Best Factory Awards. Yara makes the YaraVita range of foliar and micronutrient fertilizers which boost crop yields across the world. It therefore looks somewhat out of place alongside other COMAH sites – typically refineries or plants dealing with pressurised reactors or explosive materials. Yet under a change of regulations in 2005, zinc suspensions – nutrients that are vital to plant health and non-toxic to humans – were reclassified as hazardous to the environment and to aquatic organisms. David Tomkinson, director of production, admits it was a shock but now says: "Although it was quite a journey, we've learned a lot from it; and the improvements we have made have been to the good of the operation. It was very, very challenging but, on reflection, it has not been bad." Factory manager Mark Wetherill describes COMAH as a very good driver for change. "We had to put together a 300-page document. It forces you to look at absolutely every aspect of your operation – not just obvious things like spillages but also management systems and how you train and even recruit people." He says it was daunting but Yara UK's Scandinavian parent has rigorous safety standards so there was no conflict about taking a radical look at existing procedures. "We were proactive in the report – we knew there were opportunities for improvement. We identified nine key areas to improve and showed how we would tackle them." Wetherill says the result was rather like a business road map that dovetailed into the overall programme for taking the plant forward. Take, for example, the way it tackled the risks of product spillage for COMAH. At a basic level, it installed an automated system that seals off any release of water from the site to watercourses in an emergency, even that used in firefighting. However, it extended its scrutiny to its handling of all chemicals, not just the classified ones. As a result, it made major changes to its loading and unloading processes, which now happen undercover within a bunded building. "It meant some investment but not a huge amount and we scored a big environmental plus," recalls Wetherill. "And, as a knock-on, we found we could now load twice as fast with fewer people. It underlines the thought that in becoming safer, your efficiency improves. We do not separate out safety, quality and workplace efficiency. They all work together." Tomkinson doesn't underplay the impact or cost of legislative changes like this. If appeals currently going through the European courts fail, boric acid and borates – mainstays of thousands of products from bleaches to insulation and glass – are also likely to join the ranks of classified substances. "In anticipation of this, we have changed the way we operate again. We have retrained our operators in chemical awareness, and altered how it is handled and packaged. I'm not making any value judgement. We have to comply so we might as well see how we can improve at the same time." Pocklington's solution is to build the kind of plant-wide focus that not only embeds safe behaviour in normal daily working but also makes adapting to future legislative changes a great deal easier. The parent company maintains a good basic framework through a series of rigidly enforced 'golden' rules on, for example, working at height and wearing the right protective equipment. It actively promotes sharing between plants of serious incidents, lessons learned and measures taken to prevent recurrence. But Pocklington also tries to involve everyone more consultatively, particularly in risk assessments. IOSH training for everyone in the plant is backed up with team briefings, safety walks and toolbox talks – pithy, shopfloor sessions focused on specific issues. The site developed a near-miss reporting system that helped earn it Yara's safety award across all plants. It led the shopfloor to spot an opportunity in adopting that kind of reporting technique to cover potential maintenance issues, too. This evolved into 'action request' – a system that flags up and demands action on any area that needs improvement from a hazardous condition to a packaging issue. It empowers people to look for new ways of doing things that are both better and safer, and Wetherill says it has gathered its own momentum because it's the shopfloor's own design. So how much of this site's wholesale focus on safety was driven by legislation? "It accelerated it in certain areas," declares Tomkinson. "Without COMAH we might not have changed things like our chemical storage which already complied with normal rules and didn't really relate to efficiency. But most of our actions we would have taken anyway. We were not 'lumbered' by legislation – the journey of the last three years has brought about enormous improvements to our operation." He gets frankly irritated when people say red tape is taking the fun out of business. "I don't see it that way. The way that you work has inevitably changed and you can look at it positively or negatively. Seeing what we have achieved has made me rather proud and it has certainly motivated us to look for more change in the future."