Reducing Accidents at Work

Recent laws have made it easier to reduce accidents at work. The Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007 came into force on 6 April 2008. Legal specialist Jim Astle, of Darbys solicitors, says that the government's intention is to make it easier to prosecute companies who fail to protect people.

Essential to this law is that it is no longer necessary for the prosecution to prove a gross breach by the 'directing mind' of the organisation, such as a director of a duty of care owed to the victim. Now the prosecution, says Astle, must prove a death caused by the way in which an organisations' activities are managed or organised by its senior management, and where the latter amounts to a gross breach of a relevant duty of care owed by the organisation to the deceased.

However Steve Boorman, director of corporate responsibility for the Royal Mail Group, says that in reality the laws, in one sense, have had very little impact: "We already had the right training in place. The law has given us the opportunity to refresh the emphasis on safety with the prospect of more personal and serious penalties and this has grabbed management attention."

Astle warns that with no limit to the fines, and companies facing going out of business if their conviction is publicised, organisations much ensure their health and safety procedures are watertight.

But it's not just staying on the right side of the law that should encourage organisations to put their health and safety practices in check, but the very real danger of employees injuring themselves.

At Royal Mail such was the scale of the problem that a third of accidents were accounted for by slips, trips and falls. The 'trivial' became the 'serious' when the cost escalated to many millions but even once things have got better, companies cannot afford to put their feet up, as Boorman concludes: "We recognise it's a race we haven't won yet. There are positive trends that we are very proud of but there is still more to do."

And that really is at the heart of proactive health and safety management - the will and understanding that more can always be done.

According to official figures from the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), those accidents that are sometimes classed as 'minor' (slips, trips and falls) cost employers over £512 million a year in lost production and other costs.

It's also the single most common cause of injuries at work. To put that in perspective, in the catering and hospitality industry alone, the problem cost British society £31 million last year, while the food retail and food manufacturing industries' serious injuries carried a price tag of £50 million combined. Unsurprisingly, the construction, building and plant maintenance industry came in highest with a total cost of £139 million.

It's a problem that is growing in importance and concern, so much so that the HSE has launched its new 'Shattered Lives' campaign to highlight the devastating consequences of simple accidents in the workplace.

Dr Elizabeth Gibby, head of the Injuries Reduction Programme at the HSE, says: "What these figures don't reflect is the extent to which these injuries affect individual workers and their families."

For many organisations, the risk profile is also huge. As Boorman himself reveals the organisation's extremely real experiences of the issues: "We're very proud that we've reduced accidents by 50% in the last five years. It was a very real problem for us, with 193,000 employees reaching 27 million addresses across the UK and one and a half million miles being driven every day."