Health and Safety Workplace Cultures Naturally Mental Health issues can occur throughout all workplaces and industries. Poor mental health can affect any one of us. However, within the Health and Safety industries, there are some environments where raising concern about these issues is difficult. For example, within the Construction Industry there is a workplace culture which draws on ‘’traditional masculinity’’. This culture can be seen across the Health and Safety industries. For instance, Referenced from The SHP Road to Well-Being eBook: ”Referencing Robin Ely of Harvard Business School: Macho Culture is also endangering the workplace by creating a culture where people felt they “had to prove themselves” rather than assess…
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NEBOSH Diploma Syllabus Revision News #12
This element, as previously unpacks the whole area of checking that the controls you put in place are working adequately. If you’ve ever read the UK COSHH Regulations you’ll know that it does frame what it means by “adequate control”. Not only in terms of the principles of good practice and the hierarchy of control, but in terms of not exceeding any applicable workplace exposure limit (WEL). So, element B4 is mostly about WEL. First up in this section again you learn all about the concept of WELs, how they are formulated and where they can be found. You might initially worry that lead appears to have disappeared, but the…
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NEBOSH Diploma Syllabus Revision News #9
Last week I mentioned that the safety bloke isn’t expected to be a legal expert, but it helps knowing the mind of the regulator. As it turns out there was a recent example of this cited in the October 2015 edition of the Safety and Health Practitioner (In Court Analysis) – Hague (HSE Inspector) v Rotary Yorkshire Ltd [Court of Appeal, 2015]. This also illustrates the recently topical issue of hindsight bias that can infect everyone. In essence that things can seem very different, predictable or obvious after the event. In this case, the HSE inspector issued a prohibition notice based on the evidence in front of him at the…
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NEBOSH Diploma Syllabus Revision News #4
Last week we noted the proposed changes in Unit A, elements 2 & 3. Much of element is much the same as it was (previously element A3). There is a greater emphasis on business terminology now, with explicit reference to performance management, key performance indicators and leading/lagging indicators. Though quite a bit of this has been a feature of such standards as BS 18004 (one of the neat supporting guides to OHSAS 18001) for many years. A new development in A4.3 is something borrowed from the health and well-being qualification – that is how sickness absence data can be used to feed back into occupational health policies (and the targets…
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You Should be Dancing – Yeah!
You Should be Dancing – Yeah! While watching an episode of the BBC programme ‘Strictly Come Dancing’ recently I began to reflect on the health and well-being of the participants in this physically demanding show. I was undertaking this reflection while sipping from a small glass of red wine and considering which chocolate from my ‘winter wonderland’ selection would go best with a Merlot. One of the celebrity contestants on the series had recently fainted during rehearsals as a result of exhaustion, one of the professional dancers had failed to make the series owing to a foot injury sustained while practising, and one of the judges was due to have…
