Loose slips can sink ships

The following quote is for those who see health and safety (H&S) as 'bureaucracy gone mad'.

"... In all my experience, I have never been in any accident of any sort worth speaking about. I never saw a wreck and never have been wrecked, nor was I ever in any predicament that threatened to end in disaster of any sort." The speaker was Captain Edward John Smith, commander of Titanic.

Not having suffered a serious H&S incident doesn't mean you never will.

If you're open to the possibility that you are not covering all the bases, your challenge is ensuring that H&S training is as watertight as possible. Not least because of the legal requirement to provide H&S training, detailed in Section 2(2)(c) of the Health & Safety at Work Act 1974. As Richard Morgan, manager of the food manufacture section of the Health & Safety Executive's (HSE) agriculture & food sector, says: "If you have an accident, it's because someone somewhere hasn't been trained right."

Beware of blindspots, says Gerard Hand, director of Activus Safety Management Systems in Harlow, Essex, who devotes over a quarter of his work time to food processors. "A risk assessment may see a machine has a safety guard and declare it safe. What you don't see is that when a line gets blocked, people stand on the guard to sort the problem out."

Pinpointing "normal practice" when problems happen can uncover unsafe behaviour, says Hand. "Inspections should cover four aspects: observation; interviews - asking about dodgy behaviour; history [the firm's H&S record] and documentation - making sure you're up to date with legislation. Most risk assessments only observe."

Morgan cites one accident where turning a key deactivated a machine, allowing someone to enter the safety enclosure to check it. Unfortunately, removing the key was not included in the safety procedure when training people on the machine and another worker turned the equipment back on while it was being checked, resulting in a fatality.

"Where there's downtime, accidents often occur," says Morgan. "If there are interruptions to production you'll get people going into areas where they shouldn't." Consequently, addressing H&S blindspots can boost productivity and vice-versa.

Covering blindspots requires training that engages with business structures and staff at all levels in ways that keep them thinking.

The latest approaches focus on enabling senior management to take responsibility for H&S, thus propagating sound H&S values throughout a firm. The HSE has made that one of the seven pillars of its 2009 - 2010 strategy, most of which involve training. "Factory inspectors' instructions will look at H&S management, with particular regard for board level leadership," says Morgan.

H&S leadership should filter down to supervisors, who are in the best position to identify training needs, because they see what really goes on, says Morgan. He adds that consulting even junior staff and involving them in solutions promotes a H&S culture.

General workers can become H&S champions and sit on H&S committees. With their input, training can be tailored to building layout and business practice.

Clearly, training should adjust to different food and drink sectors. Bakers should teach safe handling of flour dust and they, plus other relevant processors such as confectioners, should communicate how to avoid skin complaints such as contact dermatitis.

Bespoke training is crucial too, says John Phillips, product development manager at the British Safety Council, which provides external and in-house H&S training for businesses and 14- to 19-year-old students. "A large part is whether walkways are clearly marked and kept clear and people thinking, 'if I leave a pallet here, what does it mean?' It's about making sure everybody challenges everyone else - [for example] if food is spilt, that someone clears it up and there is a procedure for spillages."

The end aim is that H&S awareness influences all aspects of behaviour. In fact, the behavioural aspect of training is attracting increasing attention. "A lot of big companies are moving into the area of psychology, trying to influence behaviour so people don't take risks," says Morgan. "In training, half the people in a room could be low risk takers and half high risk takers - often young males. Different people may need different training."

Bespoke training doesn't devalue generalised teaching, says Helen Sisson, group technical director and co-ordinator of H&S and environmental issues at Greencore Group. "It absolutely has a place, but we look for fresh ideas and new ways of working."

Greencore's H&S reports flow from safety health and environment managers to operations managers, to group health and safety manager Tom Chambers, to Sisson, to chief operating officer Tony Hynes. It champions innovative training, using a board game and new technology as its latest tools.

"For many years we have focused on the basics," says Sisson. "The next stage is to measure behaviour on the factory floor. We are rolling out BackTrack - a machine that measures movement. If people bend in the wrong way [while lifting, for example], this sets off an alarm and feeds the information into computers."

BackTrack could significantly reduce instances of poor handling, which causes most injuries and ill health in the food industry. Consequently, the HSE is interested in the machine's cross-industry potential and the statistics it generates.

"We developed a board game called 'Would You Risk It?'" adds Sisson. "Players take cards and ask questions based on H&S knowledge about the home and the workplace."

Like the use of pictograms, the game helps overseas workers understand H&S principles in a way classroom learning may not.

All this shows the need to engage with H&S training, not just tick the boxes. Accommodating H&S guidelines and strictures will cost time and money. But to quote the Institute of Occupational Health website: 'To manage H&S effectively will always cost - to fail to manage it effectively will always cost more.' Remember Captain Smith.