Directors should engage fully in health and safety leadership
May 12th 2009
The Health and Safety Executive’s (HSE) Business Involvement Unit has published Operational Minute (OM) 2009/05 to reinforce to Inspectors the importance of motivating directors and board members (or their equivalents, governors, trustees etc) to engage fully in health and safety matters within their organisations. This is in recognition that effective director leadership on such matters can deliver significant improvements in health and safety performance. It also represents one of the goals enshrined in the UK’s new health and safety strategy.
Key messages
This OM sets out three key messages for inspectors:
- director level leadership is critical to an organisation’s health and safety performance
- the effective management of health and safety performance, combined with sensible risk management, delivers ‘bottom line’ business benefits
- the Institute of Directors (IoD) and HSE have produced guidance on leading health and safety at work (INDG417 or INDG417W/E for a dual Welsh/English version).
Actions
Inspectors are encouraged to:
- engage with directors and board members in all sectors and in all sizes of organisation, however, priority should be given to organisations where day-to-day oversight of health and safety matters has been delegated below director/board level
- explore during planned inspections how effectively directors are leading on health and safety
- examine the contribution of directors etc, to failures in good health and safety practice leading to incidents/complaints, as part of any reactive inspection
- take enforcement action against directors etc, where appropriate
The document can be found on the HSE website