Category Archives: Health & Safety
On culture, safety and corporate manslaughter
You’re an SME – why should you worry about corporate manslaughter? You’re not in a dangerous business so as directors, why should you be concerned?
The answer is simple. You are not immune from the act just because you a small firm. And every firm has risks. Often because they are least safety-aware, the ‘least dangerous’ firms are the ones where catastrophe strikes.
The Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007 was introduced to set the way for firms to be found guilty of corporate manslaughter in cases of gross breach of duty of care and or following serious management failure.
First Conviction
HRZone.co.uk (the online HR community discussion forum) reported on Monday 21st February that a four person firm has been fined £385,000 and the company has been convicted of corporate manslaughter. This SME in a traditionally safe profession is the first firm in the UK to be convicted. Continue reading →
On Duty of Care
Some cases where an employer has a duty of care to protect employees are clear cut. In activities like manual handling and working at heights it’s rather obvious that management must provide the appropriate training, tools and procedures. But in a host of other cases, we only hear about there being a duty of care when the case hits the headlines. How does the SME principal determine when to act and what to do to discharge this duty of care? And more especially how does he or she determine when to act without constant reference to a lawyer?
This short blog develops a simple model firstly to suggest when to act and secondly to understand the action needed.
Continue reading →
What makes health and safety, quality and information security management ‘people issues’?
We’ve been working with a number of organisations who are considering becoming registered under one or other of the various standards: OHSAS 18001, ISO 14001, ISO9001, ISO27001 and Lexcel for law firms. They’ve been surprised when we advised that we consult to get firms through these standards. “But this is quality management (or whatever), not people management. Surely we need a quality consultant.”
There are two things these standards have in common. First, they are a set of requirements against which the firm designs business systems and then audits to prove the systems are working. Often that is not the end and continuous incremental improvement thereafter is expected. Second and more importantly, the people in the firm must be committed to the standard or it becomes a ‘bolt-on’ to the firm’s normal operations. As a bolt on, it may satisfy the basics of the standard but it does little to enhance the profits of the firm. It gets criticised and blamed for bleeding funds when it should be contributing to the bottom line (by reducing costs, attracting more orders and the like).
