Skip to main content
IOSH Magazine: Safety, Health and Wellbeing in the world of work - return to the homepage IOSH Magaazine logo
  • Visit IOSH Magazine on Facebook
  • Visit @ioshmagazine on Twitter
  • Visit IOSH Magazine on LinkedIn
Non-verbal communication
How to build trust
March/April 2023 issue

Main navigation

  • Home
    • Browse previous issues
    • Member accolades
    • Member tributes
  • Health
    • Mental health and wellbeing
      • Bullying
      • Drugs and alcohol
      • Mental health
      • Stress
      • Wellbeing
    • Musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs)
      • Ergonomics
      • Manual handling
      • Vibration
    • Occupational cancer
      • Asbestos
      • Hazardous substances
      • Radiation
  • Safety
    • Incident management
      • Chemicals
      • Electricity
      • Fire
      • First aid
      • Slips and trips
    • Non-health related fatalities
      • Road safety
      • Work at height
    • Risk management
      • Confined spaces
      • Disability
      • Legionella
      • Lifting operations
      • Lone workers
      • Noise
      • Personal protective equipment
      • Violence at work
      • Work equipment
      • Workplace transport
  • Management
    • Human factors
      • Accident reduction
      • Behavioural safety
      • Control of contractors
      • Migrant workers
      • Older workers
      • Reporting
      • Safe systems of work
      • Sickness absence
      • Young workers
    • Leadership and management
      • Employee involvement
      • Management systems
    • Management standards
      • ISO 45001
      • ISO 45003
    • Planning
      • Assurance
      • Compliance
      • Emergency planning
      • Insurance
    • Rehabilitation
      • Personal injury
      • Return to work
    • Strategy
      • Corporate governance
      • Performance/results
      • Regulation/enforcement
      • Reputation
    • Sustainability
      • Human capital and Vision Zero
  • Skills
    • Communication
    • Personal performance
      • Achieving Fellowship
      • Career development
      • Competencies
      • Personal development
      • Professional skills
      • Qualifications
    • Stakeholder management
    • Working with others
      • Leadership
      • Future Leaders
  • Jobs
  • Covid-19
  • Knowledge Bank
    • Back to basics
    • Book club
    • Infographics
    • Podcast
    • Reports
    • Webinars
    • Videos
  • Products & Services
  • Management
    • Human factors
      • Sickness absence
      • Accident reduction
      • Behavioural safety
      • Control of contractors
      • Migrant workers
      • Older workers
      • Reporting
      • Safe systems of work
      • Young workers
    • Leadership and management
      • Employee involvement
      • Leadership
      • Management systems
    • Management standards
      • ISO 45001
      • ISO 45003
    • Planning
      • Assurance
      • Compliance
      • Emergency planning
      • Insurance
    • Strategy
      • Corporate governance
      • Performance/results
      • Regulation/enforcement
      • Reputation
    • Sustainability
      • Human capital and Vision Zero
  • Health
    • COVID-19
    • Mental health and wellbeing
      • Bullying
      • Drugs and alcohol
      • Mental health
      • Stress
      • Wellbeing
    • Musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs)
      • Ergonomics
      • Manual handling
      • Vibration
    • Occupational cancer
      • Asbestos
      • Hazardous substances
      • Radiation
  • Safety
    • Incident management
      • Chemicals
      • Electricity
      • Fire
      • First aid
      • Slips and trips
    • Non-health related fatalities
      • Road safety
      • Work at height
    • Risk management
      • Confined spaces
      • Disability
      • Legionella
      • Lifting operations
      • Lone workers
      • Noise
      • Personal protective equipment
      • Violence at work
      • Work equipment
      • Workplace transport
  • Skills
    • Communication
    • Personal performance
      • Career development
      • Competencies
      • Personal development
      • Qualifications
      • Professional skills
      • Achieving Fellowship
    • Stakeholder management
    • Working with others
      • Leadership
      • Future Leaders
  • Transport and logistics
  • Third sector
  • Retail
  • Mining and quarrying
  • Rail
  • Rehabilitation
    • Personal injury
    • Return to work
  • Utilities
  • Manufacturing and engineering
  • Construction
  • Sector: IOSH Branch
    • Sector: Northern Ireland
    • Sector: Midland
    • Sector: Merseyside
    • Sector: Manchester and North West Districts
    • Sector: Ireland East
    • Sector: Ireland
    • Sector: Edinburgh
    • Sector: Desmond-South Munster
    • Sector: Qatar
    • Sector: Oman
    • Singapore
    • Sector: South Coast
    • Sector: South Wales
    • Sector: Thames Valley
    • Sector: Tyne and Wear
    • Sector: UAE
    • Sector: West of Scotland
    • Sector: Yorkshire
  • Healthcare
  • Sector: Fire
  • Sector: Financial/general services
  • Sector: Energy
  • Education
  • Sector: Communications and media
  • Chemicals
  • Sector: Central government
  • Catering and leisure
  • Agriculture and forestry
  • Sector: Local government
  • Sector: IOSH Group
    • Sector: Financial Services
    • Sector: Sports Grounds and Events
    • Rural industries
    • Sector: railway
    • Public Services
    • Sector: Offshore
    • Sector: Hazardous Industries
    • Sector: Food and Drink
    • Sector: Fire Risk Management
    • Education
    • Construction
    • Sector: Aviation and Aerospace
Quick links:
  • Home
  • Categories
  • Opinion

HSE’s strategy: positive noises

Open-access content Monday 22nd February 2016
From the archive:  Just so you know, this article is more than 3 years old.

But the consultation and briefing events the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) hosted in January and February suggest the debate has moved on at last. Invited audiences around the UK heard about the new strategy, Helping Great Britain work well, and those at the London meeting, opened by Justin Tomlinson, the minister responsible for safety and health, could be forgiven for wondering where all the political animus against regulation had gone.

When the Löfstedt Report in 2013 defended most of the regulatory settlement, there was nowhere the antihealth and safety lobby could go other than restricting HSE funding. But the government's austerity ecomonics has brought similar budget restrictions to local authorities and other public bodies. The ideological arguments that safety and health law and practice is bad for business appear to have been silenced, for the time being at least.

The new strategy has six themes: getting every employer and worker to take responsibility for safety and health under the "Acting together" banner; supporting small businesses, with an emphasis on simple advice, debunking "over-the-top" provision and risk adverse approaches; addressing work-related ill health, not least because it costs everyone so much, including those made ill, employers and taxpayers; keeping pace with the changing workplace and workforce.

The HSE's last two priorities are publicising the business benefits of managing risks well, and sharing success, which is partly promoting the UK's approach and partly selling it directly as the HSE takes its services abroad.

The devil will be in the detail, but it is a good and balanced package that is so refreshing after years of sterile defensive discussions about the value of good workplace safety and health to a modern society. If good safety and health management is a good thing -- and, by implication, the opposite is a bad thing -- then we should concentrate on defining it, doing it, recognising and celebrating it.

Of course, there remain risks. The financial squeeze is restricting what the UK's leading institution for safety and health (the HSE) is able to do. There is also the possibility that revenue generation, both through fee for intervention and overseas service provision, could divert the HSE from its core function of supporting and insisting on high standards of risk management across UK workplaces.

But for now, I welcome the new strategy and the way that it is being presented as a refreshing next step in improving UK business through improving health and safety and health performance. If only there could be a similar sea change on funding social housing provision and care in the community.

You may also be interested in...

 OSH in the sustainability agenda

Monday 22nd February 2016
I was invited recently to meet representatives of a global company with a household name. The business was working on its sustainability strategy and, under Chatham House rules, bravely sought the opinion of around 20 external stakeholders including IOSH.The opening statements made by the organisation were encouraging. Its investors and board had formulated a mechanism to measure return on capital for non-financial indicators, and were focusing particularly on gains from risk management and governance.
Open-access content

 Good people can sometimes do bad things

Wednesday 2nd March 2016
Businesses aren’t moral entities. They may be staffed by people who do the right thing more often than not, but that’s because they reflect the make-up of the general population.Companies exist to turn a profit and their executive directors in particular are appointed with the primary duty to generate shareholder value.
Open-access content

 Drones, rugby tackles and smallpox: risk in the news

Friday 18th March 2016
Other months may be less busy, but the spurs that propel such topics into the public realm guarantee a continued supply.One of these is the interface between technological innovation and the vagaries of human nature; people acquire new devices and find improbable ways to use them. Hence the calls for tighter restrictions on domestic use of drones and, more curious still, laser pointers. (I can’t have been the only one whose belief in the goodness of humanity suffered a knock at the news there were 1,440 reports by pilots in 2014 of people shining lasers into plane cockpits.)
Open-access content

 Brexit and our place in the world

Tuesday 22nd March 2016
With a possible change in our relationship with Europe in the offing, would leaving the bloc make the UK safety and health landscape look any different and would we remain as influential among the remaining members?Our robust Health and Safety at Work Act has had a profound impact on EU law. The act’s “so far as reasonably practicable” qualifying phrase was included in the 1989 Framework Directive on Safety and Health at Work (not without dissent), which became a strong foundation of EU safety and health regulation.
Open-access content

 Welcome to IOSH Magazine online

Sunday 10th January 2016
We will bring you the stories behind the stories. That means talking to the regulators when they take employers to court, and finding the root failings that others can learn from.This willingness to dig deeper carries through into in our first sample feature – there are plenty more to come but we and IOSH want to keep some surprises for the first issue of the print magazine, available in hard copy and online flipping PDF version at the beginning of February.
Open-access content

 A watching brief

Friday 8th January 2016
The work of health and safety practitioners is always changing, of course whether it’s responding to threats from governments who understand price but not value, or changes in work that means that psychological stress rises in one place while silicosis in young men employed to spray sand on denim to “stone wash” jeans (true fashion victims) arises somewhere else.
Open-access content

Latest from Opinion

web--scales-iStock-184986045.png

 A reasonable balance to strike

Friday 24th March 2023
Safety interventions should be practicable and cost-effective, but too much of an imbalance towards safety does not make economic sense for employers, argues Geoff Vaughan, who suggests ‘gross disproportion’ provides a practical limit.
Open-access content
web-Risk-iStock-1369259703.jpg

 Not so common sense: predicting risk properly

Tuesday 21st March 2023
Common sense means different things in different countries and cultures. Far better to consider public, industry and expert types of knowledge, writes Angela Gray CMIOSH, technical lead at IOSH.
Open-access content
web_Jeremy-hunt-holding-dispatch-box_credit_Fred-Duval_shutterstock_2275701011.png

 Spring budget and occupational health

Friday 17th March 2023
Richard Jones CFIOSH, comments on the occupational health aspects of the Chancellor Jeremy Hunt's first budget statement.
Open-access content
Share
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Linked in
  • Mail
  • Print

Latest Jobs

Senior Health and Safety Manager

Reading
Up to £65000.00 per annum + Great Car Allowance & Benefits
Reference
5452983

Regional Health and Safety Advisor

Northampton
Up to £53000 per annum + Travel & Excellent Benefits
Reference
5452982

Global Health, Safety and Environment Director

Up to £150000 per annum + Excellent Benefits
Reference
5452980
See all jobs »

Sign up for regular e-alerts

Receive the latest news and features, free to your inbox

Sign up

Subscribe to IOSH magazine

Receive the print edition straight to your door

Subscribe
IOSH Covers
​
FOLLOW US
Twitter
LinkedIn
YouTube
CONTACT US
Contact us
Tel +44 (0)20 7880 6200
​

IOSH

About IOSH
Become a member
IOSH Events
MyIOSH

Information

Privacy Policy
Terms & Conditions
Cookie Policy

Get in touch

Contact us
Advertise with us
Subscribe to IOSH magazine
Write for IOSH magazine

IOSH Magazine

Health
Safety
Management
Skills
IOSH Jobs

© 2023 IOSH • IOSH is not responsible for the content of external sites

ioshmagazine.com and IOSH Magazine are published by Redactive Media Group. All rights reserved. Reproduction of any part is not allowed without written permission.

Redactive Media Group Ltd, 71-75 Shelton Street, London WC2H 9JQ