The Safety & Health Expo 2010 took place on 11 May at the NEC in Birmingham with the overriding message being not to comply with health and safety measures because it ties in with legislation, but to do it because it’s beneficial and the right thing to do by your employees.
Those are the sentiments of HSE board member Judith Donovan CBE who opened the expo, and that call has been echoed across the United Kingdom – especially by us at Heightsafe Systems. The UK currently has the most impressive record throughout the European Union in regard workplace fatality numbers, but Judith believes it still isn’t good enough and a lot of hard work has to be done to reduce workplace accidents further still.
Citing the Health and Safety At Work Act – currently celebrating its 35th anniversary – she commented: “Our primary legislation is based on the premise that those who create the risk are best placed to manage it. It’s your workplace, your employees, therefore your solutions.”
We share Judith’s passion to ensure that workers are safe through a strict health and safety culture, and heavily stress that it should be the directive of the company in question to affix measures for worker protection as opposed to implementing fall protection for the sake of it.
If your employees need constant access to the roof, utilise the benefits of guardrails. If they are regularly harnessed to the side of the building, invest in safety line retesting and make sure your eyebolts haven’t been weathered too badly. Even problems you haven’t given much thought to such as gutter maintenance can be solved efficiently and economically.
Your passion for your business should go hand-in-hand with your commitment to your employees, as expertly highlighted by Judith Donovan. Contact us at Heightsafe Systems for more information about how to make your business safer for you and your workforce.