The true cost of an accident

EXYZED Co. are rushing to get an order finished  when Jay trips over  a trailing cable  and lands awkwardly, bringing down a set of shelves and their contents. He thinks he’s broken his wrist.  There is disruption, every one gathers around to help.  Not a major accident  but more costly than you might think.

Look at the real cost of this accident.

Disruption to work :  

20 workers x ½ hour  x £5.00 per hour                                                 £50 

Replacement of shelving :Cost of new shelves £60

 Labour to re erect  £20

Restacking goods on to shelves and clearing up  2 hrs x £5                     £90

 Taxi to take Jay to hospital                                                                    £10

Jay has damaged his wrist so badly that he needs to be off work for two weeks, Meanwhile the order must be completed .

Cost of agency worker for  one 40 hour week                                       £200 

But the agency worker is not as fast as Jay and   in order not to lose the order  the rest of the staff of 20 must work an hour overtime every day ,

 20 x 1hr x £7.50 x 5 days                                                                   £750               

 Because Jay is off work  for more than three days   due to an accident at work the accident must be reported under the Reporting Injuries, Deaths and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations (RIDDOR).  Jay needs to be paid  statutory sick pay for  the two weeks that he is off. An insurance claim needs to be completed

Cost of administration of 3 hrs x  £ 5                                                     £15 

Cost to the firm so far  £ 1,115.

And this is not an exhaustive list. And all because  a trailing  cable was not taped down.

The cost of avoiding the accident;   a roll of hazard warning tape- £40, and   five minutes work to tape down the trailing cable.   

Keeping the workplace does not have to cost a lot  and makes financial sense.

Owners and Occupiers duty to manage asbestos 

New regulations being brought in next year will require  owners and occupiers to determine the presence of asbestos in their buildings and assess and control the risk from the material.

Although it is now illegal to use asbestos in the construction or refurbishment of any premises, many thousands of tonnes of it were used in the past and much of it is still in place . As long as it is in good condition and is not being or going to be disturbed or damaged there is no risk. Bur if it is disturbed or damaged, it can become a danger to health .

Asbestos –containing materials may be present if a building was constructed or refurbished before  1985  (when blue and brown asbestos was banned) . Some asbestos containing materials , such as asbestos cement were used up until 1999. 

An HSE leaflet: Managing Asbestos in Premises INDG223(rev2)  gives a good outline of the requirements of the  new regulations. 

On March 12^th 2002 an HSE  Inspector will address the BAOHSF  meeting  on Managing Asbestos-the new regulations .

New Office Technologies – Health and Safety implications.

Notes from a presentation by Nigel Bryson, Director of Environment, Health and Safety, GMB.

Nigel began with a brief history of why occupational health has never been seen as a serious problem.  The employer did not get ill, the worker did!  It wasn’t until the professional classes began suffering (doctors and teachers) that occupational health began to be taken more seriously. There was a tradition of viewing workers as a cheap commodity (indeed even today the average fine for a fatality is only £6000)

The GMB have found that the concerns of their members and safety representatives do not coincide with the views of what the experts think are the main issues.  Offices are inherently healthy are they not?, which is why enforcement officers are not expected to inspect them.

In the early days of offices, the keyboard of a typewriter limited the speed of an operator (because if you went too quick the bits hitting the ribbon jammed).  The QWERTY keyboard layout is designed to slow the operator to prevent this happening.  However the move away from manual typewriters to VDU’s changed things.  There was now no limit to speed of keyboard use, and this resulted in targets (keystrokes per minute) and an ability to monitor the rate of use by the user.  Piecework became common in the office.

Integrating the technologies made things worse, especially as the users often received inadequate training.  This led to a new concept of Stress at Work, in what had previously been seen as a safe environment.  Nigel thought that this was because of the de-skilling of the tasks, a repetitive workload and a lack of control over it.

A survey of ammunition produced showed that 1/3 were ‘duds’.  The manufacturer made some changes to their systems.  They provided a canteen so that workers could have a meal (and a break) and so be able to last to the end of the day.  They stopped Sunday working, and limited shift length.  They introduced the morning and afternoon break with the strange concept of operatives moving away from where they worked, actually stopping and being allowed to talk to colleagues about other than work.  Quality rocketed.  This was done, not recently, but in 1915.  Compare this with the problems of today’s offices and call centres.  How many of these lessons have been learned?

Call centres are the same as traditional production lines.  Staff cannot take a break when they want, they have a working space that they do not own (hot desking – called this because it is still warm from the bum of the previous user), the clock has been replaced by the ‘ number waiting in your call queue’, a limited time to answer the query and of course sell the caller something they really do not need!

The experience is that employers allow staff no control over their work.  They often have a policy of ‘ship em in, burn em out, chuck em out’.  Nigel did recognise that there are, of course, good examples of call centres, but it illustrates the point that the H&S problems are the same today as they were during the 1^st World War.

There is a perception that office work is safe, but it is a perception.  It can be highly un-healthy.  Offices are not perhaps as safe as we might think.

So how can employers avoid all these problems?  It was quite simple really.  Involve the workforce.

1. Staff should be involved in choosing the ‘tools’ to do the job.

2. There must be training to use the ‘tools’ and support when it goes wrong.

3. Be aware of the costs.  Just because there are no blood and guts it does not mean that there is no health cost.  RSI may not exist officially but you try to explain that to somebody who can no longer use their hands.

4. There is a cause/effect relationship for health as well as safety and this must be recognised

5. Make sure you choose technology that does what you want, and

6. IT’S ALL ABOUT INVOLVING THE STAFF/WORKERS.

Jeff Lawrence

The Meaning of Competence in Health and Safety

What is competence?

 Dictionaries define competence as ability and competent as adequately qualified. 

The Management of Health and Safety Regulations 1999 says that every employer must appoint one or more competent persons to assist them to comply with health and safety regulations. What qualities or qualifications are required for a person to be deemed competent? The approved codes of practice for this regulation say that for simple situations knowledge of best practice and an awareness of one’s own limitations may be sufficient. This would obviously be insufficient for a workplace such as an oil refinery. The guidance notes that accompany section seven of the Management of Health and Safety Regulations 1999 say that wherever possible the competent person should be someone from inside the company. 

Qualifications.

Academic qualifications cannot guarantee that a person would qualify as competent. They must also posses experience relevant to the workplace where they are to be the competent person. A good example of this is that of a large supermarket chain which was fined for offences relating to the death of an employee who was crushed by a forklift truck. The court’s decision was that although the person said to be competent had health and safety qualifications she had little experience of forklift trucks and in this instance, could not be deemed competent.

A Competent Person.

It would seem that a competent person should possess [order not relevant]                                                                        

• Experience of the type of work and workplace where they are to be deemed competent. 

• Knowledge of up to date best practice. 

•  Health and safety qualifications that allow application to a professional body [IOSH IIRSM]. 

•  An awareness of their limitations.       

 Robert Woods-Keighley Worksafe                                                                                                                                 REF: The meaning of competence in health and safety , Andrew Christodoulou, HEALTH AND SAFETY MANAGER BRIEFING, No 81, CRONER

NVQs in Health and Safety 

There are a variety of NVQs in Health and Safety which are 

Health and Safety Level 3 

Health and Safety Practitioner Level 4

Health and Safety Regulator Level 4 

All these NVQs are under review and the new Standards are likely to be available by November 2001, with registrations for the new qualifications starting in summer 2002.  This Review is being conducted by the Employment NTO (National Training Organisation), in conjunction with HSE, IOSH and Health and Safety Practitioners. 

The Employment NTO is also responsible for Standards for H+S Representatives, which are part of this same Review, with contributions from the TUC and HSE.

There is as well an Advanced Modern Apprenticeship in Occupational Health and Safety Practice which has just recently been approved, and the first candidate has just been registered. 

For all these Awards individuals will need to demonstrate competence in the workplace: this will mean demonstrating to an Assessor who is occupationally competent what you actually do, or have done, at work, and proving that you can do this reliably and consistently in a range of work settings.  You may find that a course is useful in providing the underpinning knowledge, but you do not achieve the NVQ through the course alone, and will need to show what you can do in the workplace. 

For further information about the Employment NTO and Standards in H+S visit the web-site www.empnto.co.uk         Contact :Sheila Hawkins for information about the Review of H+S Standards, Carol Adams for information re Advanced Modern Apprenticeships

NVQ as a route to ‘official’ competence.    

National Vocational Qualifications (NVQs) in Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) are nationally recognised qualifications which show that the holder has the practical skills and technical ability to work in the health and safety sector. The concept is that the holder is already competent by the fact that they are working in a H&S role and this may be demonstrated by providing written evidence that a number of performance criteria have been met. There are two levels of competence (3 & 4) of NVQ for OHS personnel. Level 3 is suitable for anyone who provides assistance in organisations with hazards and risk of a relatively straightforward nature (e.g office environments) and level 4 is suited for those assisting with significant hazards and complex risks (e.g. manufacturing or industrial workplaces). 

I undertook the level 4 NVQ for two reasons. Firstly, I am a Senior Consultant with a H&S consultancy company in Bradford (Envirocare) and as such I work in a wide variety of workplace environments. Secondly, NVQ 4 also enabled a route to membership of IOSH (Institute of Occupational Safety & Health) that would otherwise have required completion of a two year diploma course and examinations. To complete the NVQ, ten modules were submitted in a portfolio that included over 100 pieces of evidence. Each of the modules was concerned with showing competence in a range of areas such as health and safety system development for complex risks, how a system was maintained, how emergency response capabilities were implemented, how staff were trained, how a positive culture was promoted and information storage and organisation. For each module, a brief (500-1000 word) description of how the performance requirements were met was submitted and this was cross-referenced to the pieces of evidence from my work role.  

One module a month was tackled which involved a meeting with an external tutor to clarify the demands of the module in hand and then producing the work in home and office hours where necessary. An average of 10 - 20 hrs work was required for each module and it took about a year to complete the NVQ. 

I found the work to be beneficial to me as it illustrated just how far I had developed and it helped improve my approach to H&S. My employer benefited by the relatively low time requirements at work which meant that I was not distracted from paid consultancy work. The overriding, crucial benefit is that the course has enabled me to prove ‘official’ competence to clients and peers in the H&S profession. 

Harry Bond-Envirocare Technical Consultancy Ltd

  IT'S ALL CHANGE FOR ACCIDENT REPORTING 

RIDDOR (Reporting Of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations 1995) require employers and self employed persons to notify certain work related accidents, dangerous occurrences and diseases.  There are exhaustive lists of the dangerous occurrences and diseases that the Regulations refer to, but accidents are easily remembered as,                         

1. Accidents at work that result in a fatality.  

2. Accidents that result in a broken bone (but not the toe or finger)                         

3.  Accidents that result in a member of the public being taken to hospital, and 

4. Accidents that result in more than three days off work. 

Under RIDDOR employers/self employed persons have to notify these incidents to their enforcing authority. They are often unsure of the identity of their enforcing authority, or  its address. To make life easier, from the 1st April,  all RIDDOR notifications can now be made to a single contact centre. It is now possible to report accidents/incidents in either of the following ways.                                                                                                                                                                      

1. By telephone: 0845 300 99 23 (for the cost of a local call)

2. Via the internet:www.riddor.gov.uk 

3. By fax: 0845 300 99 24

4. By e-mail: riddor@natbrit.com

5. By continuing to send copies of F2508/2508A’s by post to Incident Contact Centre (ICC) Caerphilly Business Park Caerphilly CF83 3GG  

If either of options 1) or 2) are used then the ICC will send a copy of the submitted details back to the notifier in order to check accuracy, and to be kept as a record of the notification. After notifications have been entered onto a secure web site, Local Authorities and the HSE will access the notifications and they will be investigated as they are presently. As the legislation has not changed, employers still have the option to submit written reports (F2508/2508A’s) to local offices of Local Authorities or the HSE, but using the ICC route is designed to be much simpler and user friendly. 

Jeff Lawrence - Bradford MDC  

Also in the April Issue

Health & Safety on CD-ROM and the internet

LATEX ALLERGIES

The TUC estimates that over a million workers in Britain routinely use latex gloves and over twenty people each week have suffered an attack of asthma or dermatitis caused by latex.

Natural rubber latex is a known cause of skin irritation, dermatitis and asthma. Latex is commonly used in the health care sector. As well as being used in latex gloves, it is found in medical equipment such as catheters, intravenous tubing and some dressings and bandages. 

Irritation symptoms include:

Redness, soreness, dryness or cracking of the skin in areas exposed to latex  (dermatitis).

Symptoms of an allergic reaction include:

A rash ( hives or a general rash), inflammation of the membranes inside the nose (leading to a runny, itchy nose) red water and swollen eyes. Asthmas like symptoms  (shortness of breath, wheezing, tight chest). Symptoms can appear quite soon after contact with latex or develop after many years working with latex. An allergic reaction of this type can lead to sensitisation. Once a person is sensitised to latex even contact with the tiniest trace of the substance can cause a reaction. Latex allergy can also cause a very severe reaction, known as anaphylactic shock. Fortunately this is quite rare but can occur immediately on contact with latex.

Occupational dermatitis or asthma caused by latex  must be reported by employers under the Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations 1995 (RIDDOR)  

Latex and YOU; INDG320, FREE from HSE Books, PO BOX 1999, Sudbury, CO10 2WA

LIFT TRUCKS

Every year there are about 8000 lift truck accidents resulting in injury, and on average 10 of them are fatal. Updated guidance aimed at preventing deaths and injuries to people involving lift trucks has been published by the Health & Safety executive (HSE)  to take account of recent changes in the law. The 50 page booklet explains the law relating to lift trucks and sets out measures which should be taken to help prevent lift truck accidents. These include:

• Provision of adequate training for operators, supervisors and managers. 

• Using suitable equipment for the job to be done.  

• Laying out premises n such a way to ensure that lift trucks can move safely.

• Ensuring that lift trucks and premises are maintained properly.

 There is also new advice on restraining systems, roll-over protective structures and medical standards for truck operators.  

The information is intended for everyone with responsibility for the safe operation of lift trucks, including employers, controllers of work sites, managers, supervisors and operators. Others involved with lift trucks such as trade union health and safety representatives may also find it useful.

Safety In Working With Lift Trucks, ISBN 0 7176 1781, price £6.50 from HSE BOOKS, PO BOX 1999, Sudbury, Suffolk, CO10 2WA.

BACK PAIN IN CLEANERS

UNISON and HSE are collaborating on research to prevent back pain among cleaning staff. They are one of the highest risk groups in terms of strain injury at work, particularly back pain and arm pain associated with floor polishing, vacuuming and mopping activities.  

A recent survey of 5000 cleaners working mainly in the health, education and local authority sectors found that almost a quarter had been absent form work due to work-related aches and pains over a year. Many of these injuries are avoidable.  

It doesn’t have to be like this. What is required is the spread of good training and practice. There are in fact many straightforward practical solutions to even those activities carrying highest risk.

To help industry meet the challenge, HSE and unison are collaborating to build on a seminar last year which reviewed research into the industry’s problems. HSE and UNISON have now commissioned research from the Robens Centre for Health Ergonomics and the University of Surrey to produce guidance based on case studies demonstrating practical solutions to every day problems.

HSE would welcome examples of good practice with reference to how particular problems have been tackled.

• A brief description should outline.

• The problem and how it came to light.

• The solution and how it was developed (e.g. who was involved).

• The cost and the benefits.

• Handy tips.

If you have information you think might be useful please pass it on to Nancy Hamilton at: HSE, 59 Belford Road, Edinburgh, EH4 3UE. or phone her on 0131 247 2100.

Examples of good practise should reach her by December 23^rd at the latest. 

The full report of the survey costs £37.50. The Robens Centre has set up a website giving further information at:  www.eihms.survey.ac.uk/robens/erg/cleanguide.htm