Further to our blog in September 2011 regarding the proposed introduction of cost recovery by the HSE please read our blog on the subject – the cost is huge, if in breach the cost is £124 per hour, – that gives you all the more reason to make sure that you have all your ducks in a row and do not have any Material Breaches when April 2012 comes around.

Should the HSE visit you – get yourself and your Managers trained to identify the potential area’s you need to work on so that you and your company is complying….

Agriculture, quarries and health and social care are to be excluded from proactive HSE inspections, despite acknowledgement that they remain comparatively high-risk sectors, the Government confirmed today (21 March).

Among a number of sweeping proposals to reform the health and safety regime in Britain, the DWP has approved plans for proactive inspections to fall by a third – around 11,000 inspections a year. It also outlined proposals for the HSE to recover the costs of its inspection and investigation activity, and announced a review of health and safety regulation, with a view to reducing red tape.

Launching the new framework, Safety minister Chris Grayling said: “Of course, it is right to protect employees in the workplace, but Britain’s health and safety culture is also stifling business and holding back economic growth. The purpose of health and safety regulation is to protect people at work, and rightly so. But we need common sense at the heart of the system, and these measures will help root out the needless burden of bureaucracy.”

In addition to the high-risk sectors above, proactive inspections will also be withdrawn from several lower-risk industries, including transport, local authority-administered education provision, electricity generation, postal and courier services, as well as certain areas of manufacturing – for example, textiles, clothing, footwear, light engineering, and electrical engineering.

Proactive inspections will be retained in construction, waste and recycling, and areas of high-risk manufacturing, such as molten and base-metal manufacturing.

The decision to slash inspections has been met with outrage from unions. TUC general secretary, Brendan Barber, fumed: “Removing proactive inspections from a large number of workplaces mean that employers can get away with ignoring the law until they kill, or seriously injure someone. This is in no one’s interests and will mean an increase in deaths and injuries, leading to a rush to the bottom as cowboy companies undercut responsible employers by cutting back on safety.”

The Hazards Campaign added: “It is magical thinking for Grayling to claim these proposals will do anything but remove the credible threat of enforcement action and allow non-compliant, criminal employers to get away with harming far more workers with work-related stress, strains and pain, and injuring and killing them.”

The HSE will fill the void left by inspections by increasing joint initiatives with industry bodies to manage and control specific health and safety risks, and by targeting inspections more effectively on areas of greater risk.

The level of regulatory oversight of the major-hazard industries will not be reduced. Nevertheless, the Government is committed to “a continuing programme of modernisation of regulatory approaches and cooperation between regulators to provide a consistent and proportionate approach for business”.

A key aspect of this will involve extending the principles of cost recovery, already well-established in sectors such as offshore and nuclear, to other sectors. It is proposed that the HSE will recover all of the costs of an inspection or investigation at which a serious, material breach in standards is diagnosed, and a requirement to rectify (i.e. an enforcement notice) is formally made, together with the cost of any follow-up work.

Legally-compliant businesses will not be liable for any charge as a result of an HSE inspection and an appeal system will operate in relation to any disputes of this nature.

However, health and safety lawyers have questioned whether the move could cause more companies to appeal an enforcement notice.

James Jevon, a partner at Osborn Abas Hunt, said the proposal “would increase the importance and significance of appealing a notice, as it could be unhelpful and damaging to a defendant if it were to be disclosed during that prosecution that they paid such costs uncontested”.

Mike Appleby, a solicitor at Housemans, agreed, adding: “There is an increasing attempt by the HSE to use notices as evidence of wrongdoing in prosecutions. There is also a number of industries where the HSE does not have the relevant expertise. Are companies going to pay for the HSE to gain that expertise in an investigation with potential enforcement proceedings against them?”

The new health and safety framework, which builds on Lord Young’s review of the compensation culture last year, admits at the outset that changing the “frustrating” health and safety culture in Britain forms a key part of the Coalition’s wider deregulatory agenda. As well as the changes at HSE level, the Government has also vowed to establish an independent review of health and safety regulation, with a view to scrapping rules that put an unnecessary burden on business.

The review, which will be chaired by Professor Ragnar Löfstedt, a specialist in risk management at King’s College London, will also recommend changes aimed at clarifying the legal position of employers in cases where employees act in a grossly irresponsible manner.

Mike Macdonald, negotiator at Prospect, which represents HSE inspectors, described it as “perverse” to announce a review after introducing such significant change.

He added: “It looks as if the Government is determined to announce cuts before Professor Ragnar Löfstedt even starts his review. What happens if he concludes that more inspection, not less, is required?”

But head of health & safety at manufacturers’ body EEF, Steve Pointer, welcomed the review. He said: “While much health and safety legislation is fit for purpose some areas remain a problem, and this review has the potential to resolve anomalies, reduce burdens, and so help boost growth.”

To further ease the burden of health and safety regulation on small businesses and low-risk organisations, a new online guidance package has also been launched. Called‘Health and safety made simple’, the single piece of guidance takes SMEs through their basic health and safety duties, describing what they need to do and how they should do it. The guidance covers:

• appointing a competent health and safety advisor;
• writing a health and safety policy;
• completing risk assessments;
• consulting with employees;
• providing adequate levels of training and welfare facilities; and
• obtaining employers’ liability compulsory insurance.

The DWP framework, Good health and safety, Good for everyone is available on the DWP website.

 

From April next year the HSE will charge duty-holders who materially breach health and safety law an hourly rate of £124 for its intervention, which will be counted from when a letter or e-mail recording the duty-holder’s breach is sent.

These were among the proposals agreed to by the HSE Board today (7 December) based on a presentation of the outcome of the recent consultation on the fee-for-intervention scheme (FFI) – part of the government’s‘Good health and safety – good for everyone’ framework unveiled in March.

Almost 300 responses to the consultation were received and the HSE also held face-to-face dialogue with some 80 trade associations and companies. Seven key concerns were identified as being raised by the majority of consultees:

• A change in priorities by the HSE in order to maximise its receipts;
• Damage to the constructive relationship between the regulator and
  business;
• The definition of ‘material breach’ and reliance on individual inspectors’
  opinions, or judgements;
• The ‘trigger’ for implementing FFI;
• Whether or not local-authority regulators should be included in the
  scheme;
• The financial impact on businesses – particularly SMEs; and
• The integrity of the disputes process.

SE programme director for the scheme Gordon MacDonald told the Board that these concerns were common to most respondents, whether they were for or against. Some of them, he said, could be addressed fairly easily – such as by issuing guidance on what constitutes a material breach, and translating the regulator’s Enforcement Management Model (EMM) into ‘lay’ language so that people can better understand how inspectors operate within defined policies and procedures when making judgements.

As the majority of respondents were against including Local Authorities within the scope of the scheme, the Board agreed that they would be excluded.

With regard to the concern that the HSE would, over time, come to rely on FFI receipts and thus they would start to drive what the regulator does, Mr MacDonald emphasised the need for a “clear line on this” from the HSE Board. A focus on priority actions together with “a clear account of how we’ve delivered” – such as a publicly available report on the scheme’s first year of operation – would provide the transparency stakeholders require, he said.

The relationship between the regulator and the regulated will not suffer, he claimed. “You will not see a different HSE as a result of this scheme. We will only apply FFI where it is warranted, and not frivolously.” Essentially, the cut in HSE resources has required it to spend more time securing compliance from high-risk businesses and poor performers, so the regulator will naturally be spending more time with companies where there isn’t a mutually supportive relationship in the first place.

The new approach will obviously have a financial impact on those companies whose non-compliance requires the intervention of the HSE, and many consul tees were concerned that the hourly rate – which has now been decreased to £124 per hour from the initial estimate of £133 – could be difficult for businesses in the current economic climate, particularly SMEs.

Some suggested that ability to pay should be factored in, or that the fee should be a flat one, or based on company size but, as MacDonald explained, the HSE is bound by Treasury rules on this, in that it must recover its full costs providing they are reasonably incurred.

As for the impact on SMEs, he pointed out that, given the HSE’s plans for proactive inspections and estimates for reactive investigations, the businesses potentially affected by FFI compared to the total population of businesses is likely to be around 1 per cent or less of all UK enterprises.

Finally, in the case of fees being disputed, there will be independent, external input to the final stage of the process to avoid the HSE being seen as judge and jury”.

HSE chair Judith Hackitt expressed the wish of the Board to proceed with the scheme on the basis outlined in the proposals document. Consequently, the HSE will recommend to the minister for employment the draft Health and Safety (Fees) Regulations 2012, to come into force next April.

Following on from the recent articles in SHP on getting invited to and succeeding at job interviews,1,2 James Pomeroy suggests areas candidates could explore during the interview to better understand safety within the hiring organisation and thus stand out from the crowd.

The job-interview process provides candidates with an invaluable opportunity to better understand the hiring organisation’s view of occupational health and safety, and its vision for it. Most interviews will also offer candidates the opportunity to ask their own questions and, by researching the organisation, and asking the right questions, it is possible to gain insight into its attitudes towards risk, compliance and safety.

A word of caution, however: although the time to ask questions usually comes at the end of the process, and is often more relaxed, it is a mistake to think that the assessment process has ended. The questions asked and how they are framed say as much about the individual’s suitability for the job as any previous answers  they have provided. Well thought-out questions not only demonstrate a candidate’s interest in and enthusiasm for the job but also reveal their understanding of the situation, their maturity and insight.

So, what are good questions to ask, and how should you go about developing them? Firstly, and most obviously, actually ask questions! The number of candidates who pass up the opportunity to question the employer about the position remains high. Having no questions tells the potential employer that the candidate is indifferent, ill-prepared, or – worse – clueless.

Secondly, think out the topics you might want to discuss, remembering that employers continue to make judgements about candidates based on the questions they raise. Plan the areas you want to explore, research the organisation, and then develop the questions. Don’t limit your research to the organisation’s website; consider sector information from the likes of the HSE and trade associations. The latter are particularly useful if you have no prior experience of the industry within which the organisation operates.

Do your homework

When researching an organisation, start by clarifying the key OH&S risks it faces. This may sound obvious, but the more you home in on the significant issues the better you will understand the organisation and thus have a stronger set of questions.

Once you have a good idea of the services provided by the organisation and fully understand the sector in which they operate, it can be useful to consider the context in which the hiring is taking place. If the organisation publishes information about its aims, targets or strategy, you should think about the safety implications of these.

For example, a construction firm might be planning to move into the refurbishment sector, a retailer has announced a plan to merge distribution centres, or a council is seeking to reduce operating costs by 15 per cent. Organisational change has implications for safety practitioners at all levels and candidates who demonstrate an understanding of this will stand out from the crowd.

It is also advisable to research what performance data are available. Is it possible, for example, to obtain any injury and ill-health statistics for the sector, or even the organisation itself? Is there any record of previous enforcement action against it? Competitors or other organisations in the same sector may also provide something to compare against.

Formulate your questions 

Once you have a feel for the organisation, start drafting your questions, based on your research. Think, too, about how to frame the questions to ensure they appear informed and are respectful. Always try to ask ‘open’ questions, i.e. those that require a detailed answer, rather than a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’. This will ensure the interviewer is drawn into a discussion, providing an opportunity for candidates to again demonstrate their experience of managing a risk, or handling a particular situation.

Ask questions that reveal the depth of your research and your interest in the job. In other words, do not ask questions that are easily answered on the company website, or in the job description – “Have you not read the job description?” The areas to enquire about are the goals of the organisation, the challenges of the role, and your expectations as the candidate.

While there are no hard and fast rules on the number of questions to ask, you should prepare six to eight, on the assumption that half will be answered during the interview itself. Prioritise your questions based on importance and whether you are at first, second, or third-interview stage. Asking an obvious question in a second or third interview can be counterproductive!

While the questions you ask will be fairly specific to the organisation, following are some subjects and generic questions that I have been asked by candidates when hiring OH&S practitioners.

How are managers measured on their leadership of safety within the organisation?

The way OH&S is reviewed and reflected in performance reviews and, where applicable, reward systems, can tell you a lot about an organisation’s position on safety. The topic can lead to a whole discussion on the limitation of reactive OH&S metrics, which candidates can then use to highlight their experience of the issue, such as developing performance metrics and personal safety goals.

To what degree does senior management get involved in the OH&S programme?

When candidates have asked questions around this subject it normally leads to a discussion on the role of managers in the safety programme, and what constitutes engagement and effective leadership of safety. This provides a great opportunity for candidates to summarise how they have developed activities and processes to engage managers in the delivery of safety tasks.

How does the organisation capture and learn from near-miss events?

Organisations with an effective safety programme invest heavily in gathering and acting on near misses, and the strength of a near-miss programme is often a good indicator of an organisation’s safety efforts. This can generate a discussion on the difficulties of establishing and maintaining an effective incident-reporting process, specifically getting employees to recognise and report near misses. As with any question, however, be warned: if you ask it, make sure you, too, have some ideas and practical solutions to offer up, if asked.

What are the main causes of accidents within the organisation?

Sometimes, asking the obvious questions can tell you a lot, and the answer to this one can provide much insight and useful clues about the understanding of immediate versus underlying causes, and the importance of addressing unsafe behaviours.

If I am fortunate enough to get this job, what do you think is the biggest challenge I will face? 

While you may get a generic response with little information, it is more probable you will get some genuine insight into the difficulties of the role. You may also be able to link the problem back to your own experience and explain how you dealt with a similar issue before.

What are the organisation’s plans and objectives for improving OH&S in the next few years?

The value of the response will depend on the interviewer, and smaller organisations may not have the documented plans that you would expect from a larger organisation. However, their responses should still provide useful insight into the organisation’s view of OH&S. For example, answers that focus heavily on legal compliance and defending claims can tell you as much as those that highlight behaviour-based safety, or a goal of zero harm.

Can you clarify the reporting lines and ownership of budgets and resources?

Increasingly, OH&S practitioners operate in matrix reporting structures, which are less hierarchical. In these situations, they have to operate cross-functionally and are often reliant on resources from others. In other situations, resources are centralised and practitioners have direct responsibility for other team members and OH&S financial expenditure. Understanding the ownership of resources is a critical point that, if overlooked, can lead to frustration later on.

To what degree are employees engaged in the safety programme?

A response that indicates a high degree of involvement, such as participation in audits, accident investigations, observations and risk assessments will be more reassuring than an answer indicating that the safety team delivers the majority of the tasks and activities.

How well is safety integrated into the organisation’s operating systems and decision-making processes?

The degree to which an organisation integrates safety into decision forums, such as operational planning, strategy and change controls, and existing management processes, notably HR, operations and quality, can be illuminating.

How will my performance be evaluated?

In addition to providing an insight into the type of management style you may work under, the answers to this question will also reveal information about the organisation’s attitudes towards and goals for safety. Responses that focus exclusively on accident statistics speak volumes about where accountability for safety resides. Similarly, answers that emphasise compliance and cost-based measurements say a lot about the organisation’s vision for safety. If you ask this question, however, do be prepared for the question to be sent directly back: “How do you think you should be measured?”

What are the most immediate challenges of the position that need to be addressed in the first six months?

This is a direct question that should elicit information on the immediate priorities of the role. Asking it suggests you intend to make an impact and are focused on addressing problems.

What were the major strengths and weaknesses of the last person who held this job?

Information on the history of the position can illustrate what does and does not work at the organisation, and how success will be measured. A less direct way to get similar information is to ask: What are the skills and attributes you value most in someone being hired for this position? The answers will provide another great opportunity for candidates to sell themselves by emphasising past experiences and ‘wins’.

Now that we’ve had a chance to talk, how does my background measure up to the role and to the other candidates?

If framed correctly, this question can identify if the interviewer perceives gaps in a candidate’s competencies, or technical skills. The response may provide an opportunity to address concerns and highlight strengths and experiences previously omitted.

Conclusion

The employment market remains very tough and candidates who make each interview count and take time to fully prepare always stand out from the crowd. Asking questions will give you a much greater appreciation of the type of position that is best for you, as well as providing you with better understanding of the role and ensuring you perform better in the interview. Doing your research and asking quality questions that are thoughtful and focused will also reveal much  about the health and safety challenges within the organisation, and help you  decide whether they are what you are seeking in your next career  move.