Older workers

Whether it’s more pressing concerns, prejudice or a lack of foresight, too few firms are taking the ageing of the workforce seriously. Fortunately, it’s an area where OSH professionals can pick up the baton.

While it is no longer acceptable to assume that all men are stronger than all women, or that people of one colour have different personalities to those of another colour it is, it appears, entirely acceptable to declare that anyone born since 1980 is addicted to social media and will ‘challenge traditional hierarchical HSE systems’, while anyone born before that date is a luddite with no understanding of the modern age, but will be quite happy to toe the line.

A ship parts manufacturer in Singapore has committed to train older workers in technology in a bid to grow its business by staying competitive with its progressive employment practices.

The Health and Safety Executive Northern Ireland (HSENI) has committed to ongoing inspections of farms to reduce the number of accidents. Farming was a “high-risk way of life from a health and safety point of view,” HSENI chief executive Robert Kidd told Farming Life magazine.

The Health and Safety Executive’s (HSE) newly published statistics on workplace fatalities revealed that 147 people were killed at work in the 12 months to the end of March (a rate of 0.45 deaths per 100,000 workers). A quarter of fatal injuries were sustained by workers aged 60 or over. 

Safety & Health Expo 2019, the UK’s biggest event for health and safety professionals, opens its doors next week at ExCeL London, from 18-20 June for three days of product launches, business, learning and networking.

St Albans City Football and Athletic Club, which “failed in its duty of care towards volunteers”, has been fined after a pensioner died after falling through a roof.

A tool to assess the true cost of workplace wellbeing interventions is filling in the data gap that has so far undermined the business case for them.

Research for an interview with L’Oréal’s global health and safety director, MalcolAm Staves, reveals a paradox. The world’s largest cosmetics group has virtual shelves full of awards for its corporate social responsibility (CSR) work, it rides high in ethical business indices and was No 1 in Newsweek magazine’s global green companies ranking.

Toyota Motor Europe's specialist in health, safety and ergonomics, Stuart Bassford, recognises the pressure car assembly line workers are under if components do not fit smoothly into place. All the company's plants follow the Toyota Production System, which uses lean manufacturing principles. Fundamental to this system is having a workforce of flexible, skilled and healthy operatives.With many operatives working to as little as a 66-second "takt time" - the time between starting to build one unit and the next - the slightest delay can have repercussions along the line.