Sector Specific Events Aimed at Improving Workplace Health and Safety

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE), is currently running a series of events across the UK to look at what businesses can do to safeguard their workforce.

Forming part of its ongoing initiative to reduce workplace death, injury and ill-health, the HSE is hosting the engagement opportunities to allow companies to come together to discuss how all industry sectors can contribute to helping Great Britain work well.

Scheduled for Swansea, Glasgow, Coventry, London and Manchester, the events (held over March and April) offer a platform for attendees from diverse business communities to discuss how to sustain continued improvement in UK workplaces.

The HSE, Trade Unions, employer groups and business leaders forming part of the effort will be asked to submit solutions that can be implemented within businesses, in partnership and how those solutions can also benefit others in the supply chain, in particular, small businesses.

The new ‘sector plans’ have been split based on industry type and risk profile (19 sectors in all) and represent a solid base on which to build and improve. The HSE has outlined each sector’s health and safety performance, identified the top three strategic priorities for the next three to five year period and included actions it proposes to take.

The events will offer a further opportunity for key stakeholders and representatives from industry to comment on the plans. The HSE is inviting attendees to consider how to best implement them, how the HSE and duty holders can best work together, how the workforce can be reached in new ways, and how the campaigns can resonate.

In the UK last year, work related illness affected in the region of 1.3 million workers with nearly 26 million working days lost. The economic costs further total over £9 billion per year (for new cases). This figure does not include ongoing costs from previous injuries/illnesses.

It has long been found to be difficult to convince certain businesses that better regulation enables improved economic output and sustainable growth. However, the HSE is committed to raising the profile of health and safety, helping organisations to understand that sensible and proportionate risk management supports growth, enables innovation and protects the workforce - ultimately an organisation’s most vital asset.

The HSE is focused on where it can make a difference, whether through enforcement, advice or engaging with sectors to understand how health and safety outcomes can be positively influenced and is encouraged with the actions that have been outlined through working with key stakeholders to develop plans for 2017. This series of events will help refine and fine tune that activity.

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Further information:

Helping Great Britain Work Well

Working Well Together Events