I found myself in front of a group of senior execs a few weeks ago talking about the influence that they have on the safety culture of their organisations, and consequently the safety-related behaviours of their workers. The course was the new NEBOSH / HSE Health and Safety Leadership Excellence course. This is an ideas-rich one day introduction to the principles of health and safety leadership. It has a heavy emphasis on human factors and is more concerned with leadership styles and the psychology of decision-making than it is with the nuts and bolts of safety management. I blogged about certain aspects of the course a few months ago (see…
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“Hey! Let’s be Careful Out There”
As a health and safety tutor I have to introduce myself to rooms full of students all the time. I always start by telling them that I used to work as a production supervisor in an industrial bakery near Sheffield making tea cakes, white baps and hot cross buns for Marks and Spencer’s. And then I confess that as a production supervisor I had no particular interest in health and safety. I knew that it was one of my responsibilities, because it said so in my job description, and I did do some health and safety related activities routinely; such as safety inspections. But I was not particularly interested in…
