DASH - Director Action on Safety and Health
Measuring and Reporting on Corporate Health and Safety Performance
Health and Safety Management
The management system approach
One of the strengths of the UK approach to OS&H is the understanding that regulators and duty holders should not simply focus on control of specific hazards but should address the capability of organisations to tackle work-related risks proactively and systematically. This approach, which draws heavily on ideas in the area of quality management, involves employers having an OS&H management system comprising policies, structures and procedures which enable their organisation to ‘lock on’ to its risks and achieve continuous improvement in performance.
Such a ‘systems’ approach, informed by risk assessment and characterised by multiple feed-back loops from monitoring and review, has been promoted in HSE’s guidance ‘Successful Health and Safety Management’ HSG65 (HSE, 1997a) and similar BSI guidance, BS 8800 (BSI 1996a). Both have stressed the potential of a ‘systems’ approach to enhance standards of health and safety and this has been reflected in ‘Revitalising’ which focuses on the need to improve the OS&H competence of organisations as well as of individuals and has proposed the idea of a health and safety management ‘yardstick’ or standard (Action point 4 in ‘Revitalising’ .)
Director engagement with OS&H
Despite the success of publications such as HSG65 and BS 8800, there is evidence that many organisations are failing to understand the position OS&H in relation to total quality management (TQM) and business excellence models or the potential of such models to inform and improve their approach to OS&H management.
Research on implementation of TQM has suggested that leadership and continuous improvement with respect to OS&H is often far behind that for product or service quality (HSE, 1997b). A key influencing factor is insufficient appreciation of the ‘business case’ for OS&H at director level.
In part this may be because many directors, particularly those in smaller firms, have not fully understand or responded to contemporary OS&H concepts:
For example, they may:
- perceive OS&H as a technical and regulatory compliance issue; but
- fail to understand the goal setting approach to OS&H law;
- see health and safety requirements as over-restrictive or ‘burdensome’; and
- wrongly interpret HSC/E guidance as having prescriptive regulatory force;
- see regulations as being too vague and/or impossible to comply with; and
- fail to fully appreciate the ‘business case’ for OS&H.
Research on OS&H coverage in MBA courses in business schools (carried out by the Health and Safety Unit of Aston University in 1997 in conjunction RoSPA) has suggested that there is still insufficient coverage of OS&H concepts in professional education. This largely is because of the perception of course providers that health and safety is essentially rule based and lacks intellectual challenge (Hawkins and Booth, 1998). It was found that, except in the rare cases where there were local ‘champions for the subject, health and safety was not covered in any detail; perceptions of the subject were on the whole negative and outdated; and its relationship to the modern management agenda was not appreciated. It was recommended that OS&H should be covered in business schools’ curricula but not as a separate subject and the approach should be to explore the issues involved and the management approaches required through core aspects of the curriculum using case studies.
Strengthening director involvement
Greater uptake of pro-active risk management is unlikely unless there is increased commitment to OS&H from senior business leaders. Factors which are likely to stimulate greater director involvement in OS&H include:
- ethical considerations;
- official guidance on directors’ OS&H roles;
- the 'business case' for OS&H (including loss of corporate credibility following accidents etc);
- OS&H law and enforcement;
- client pressure;
- trades union and workforce involvement;
- the impact of common law claims;
- shareholder, public and political expectations;
- legislative reform to enhance corporate and director liability; and
- higher standards of corporate governance.
The current debate about the liability of individual directors for OS&H management failures (emanating from new Government proposals on reform of the law on manslaughter) has also been echoed in part in wider debates about standards of corporate governance and risk management. The full impact of reports in this area, including Cadbury, Greenbury and Hampel (Combined Code 1998) and the Turnbull report (ICAEW, 1999) as well as recent guidance from BSI (BSI 2000) has yet to emerge.
Another important development is the ‘Global Reporting Initiative’ (GRI 2000) which, although not covering OS&H specifically, sets out general principles and practices which are relevant to internal and external corporate reporting on OS&H. It underlines the need for clear, corporate accountability on a whole range of business performance issues such as the environment and ethical trading, strengthening the growing expectation that risk management as a whole should take on a much higher profile in organisations.
These developments will not only affect PLCs but also large public sector organisations, the NHS, local authorities and many other diversified and multi-branch organisations. This will mean that OS&H questions will have to addressed as part of operations risk - but equally effort will be needed to ensure that OS&H questions and expertise are not submerged in this wider approach.
Organisations will not be able to respond to these influences unless they develop and implement robust approaches to health and safety management. That in turn will not be possible unless they are able to develop effective ways of measuring OS&H performance, both to monitor OS&H operationally and to take an overview at a divisional and/or corporate level, for example by monitoring progress towards corporate improvement targets and communicating the results to internal and external audiences. Developing robust and meaningful approaches to OS&H performance measurement is thus an important ingredient in future UK OS&H strategy.
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