Employee involvement

Sensory elements such as smell and heat now feature in immersive technologies for safety training. The author reports on their impact and test-drives one of them.

Is worker consultation key to overcoming criticism of procedure-led ways to manage safety?

A South Wales builders’ merchant has been fined £40,000 after an employee sustained multiple fractures while retrieving supplies from racking.

A training technique typically used in art education offers a fresh perspective on identifying hazards.

Personality can indicate how people will perform in a safety-critical role. 

The ruling on 5 December, which dismissed a judicial review brought by the Independent Workers Union of Great Britain (IWGB), is a blow to gig economy campaigners seeking union recognition rights and workers' rights such as sickpay and paid holidays. The High Court upheld a previous judgment by labour law body the Central Arbitration Committee (CAC) in November 2017, which had confirmed that the food courier's riders were self-employed.

“The use of PPE must not increase the overall level of risk,” says the Health and Safety Executive’s guidance (L25) on the Personal Protective Equipment Regulations, “ie PPE must not be worn if the risk caused by wearing it is greater than the risk against which it is meant to protect.”

Only two-in-five manufacturers surveyed (42%) said FFI, introduced in 2012 to make dutyholders pay for notification of minor breaches, had made them think less favourably of the regulator, down from almost three in five (56%) two years ago. The proportion saying FFI made them less likely to ask a visiting inspector for advice had also fallen from 57% to 41%, despite inspectors being obliged to charge them £129 an hour for notification of any material breaches they find during site visits.

Hawthorne Works was the name of a factory near Chicago in the US, operated by Western Electric in the early part of the 20th Century. Although Elton Mayo of the Harvard Business School is the name most associated with the Hawthorne effect, he wasn’t involved until 1928, four years into data collection.