Some organisations are nervous about engaging a health and safety consultant. Here is a little bit of information on what to look for and the benefits that a good health and safety consultant an bring.

Why use a health and safety consultant?

Health and safety consultants bring specialised expertise and experience to ensure your management system meets legal requirements, industry standards, and best practices. We offer tailored advice, knowledge of risk and legal requirements, and strategies to enhance workplace safety; potentially reducing incidents and ensuring compliance. Their insights can save time, streamline processes, and ultimately contribute to a safer work environment.

What do I look for when choosing a health and safety consultant?

Look for a consultant with relevant certifications, experience in your industry, a strong track record, and client testimonials. Also, assess their communication skills, ability to understand your specific needs and values, and their approach to developing practical solutions. A consultant who prioritises collaboration and ongoing support can be highly valuable. Beware of consultants that offer ready made solutions with out detailed discussion to understand your business activities, organisational culture and areas of risk - these can fall far short of meeting your needs. Also be very cautious of of signing up to contracts that tie you in for long periods of time and / or rolling contracts with short windows to terminate the contract before you are committed for another prolonged period. I speak to many organisations stuck in contracts for up to 3 years they don't want to be in and that are not meeting their needs but still have to be paid on a monthly basis.

Why is a health and safety consultant who shares your values better than one who doesn’t?

A consultant who shares your values is more likely to understand and prioritise the specific safety culture and goals you want to foster within your organisation. This alignment ensures a more cohesive approach to implementing safety measures, making it easier to integrate recommendations and improvement seamlessly into your workplace. It can also lead to better employee buy-in and engagement with the safety initiatives, ultimately creating a safer and more harmonious work environment.

Introduction:

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness………..Autumn is without a doubt my favourite season and my favourite time of year for carrying out site visits. However, as the leaves fall, temperatures drop, and mornings become misty and frosty there are some health and safety issues that we need to bear in mind a bit more at this time of year; so if  you are out and about completing bat roost or wintering bird surveys, or even aquatic invertebrate surveys this autumn; here are a few things for you to bear in mind.

Slippery Surfaces:

The falling leaves and wet boggy ground can create slippery surfaces, particularly when they become wet from rain or morning dew. Be cautious when walking on pathways or climbing slopes covered in fallen leaves. Use proper footwear with good traction and a good grip and remember to clean those soles and grips of caked mud.

Reduced Daylight Hours:

As autumn progresses, daylight hours decrease. Dim lighting can make it challenging to navigate safely. Ensure you have adequate lighting equipment, such as torches, headlamps, or portable floodlights, to illuminate work areas and pathways. Try to plan for site visits to take place during daylight hours.

Cold Weather:

It’s easy to get caught out with cold temperatures during autumn, especially when we have been having unseasonably warm days; but the temperatures will drop at some point. Falling temperatures can lead to cold stress or even hypothermia. Dress in layers to maintain warmth and use insulated clothing to protect against the cold. Don't forget to cover extremities with gloves, hats, and scarves and consider using outdoor gloves specifically designed for writing or tablet use so that it isn’t necessary to keep taking gloves off.

Wildlife Encounters:

Autumn is a season of increased wildlife activity, including mating and migration. When rural locations, remote or wooded sites, be aware of the potential for wildlife encounters, including for example dear which are on the move for mating season during autumn and are commonly seen on roads. For more information visit https://www.deeraware.com/

Visibility Challenges:

Fog, mist, or rain are common weather conditions during autumn. Reduced visibility can hinder site assessments and create potential risks when operating machinery. Identify measures appropriate for your site, for example marking out walking routes and working areas, wear reflective vests and appropriate lighting.

Driving:

Autumn and winter driving can be particularly hazardous, dazzle from the sun, glare from wet roads, reduced visibility, heavy rain, ice and fog can create difficult driving conditions. Ensure that you have considered whether driving is necessary, planned your route including places to take regular rest breaks, and made sure that your car is well maintained and is autumn and winter ready, for example ensuring screen-wash and anti-freeze are topped up, lights are working correctly, tyres are suitable with adequate tread. For more information on autumn driving, please visit https://www.theaa.com/driving-advice/seasonal/autumn

If you would like support risk assessing the hazards associated with site visits or assistance with any other aspect of health and safety in your business, please call Helen  - Health and Safety Specialist on 07572464445 or email helen.byram@buzzsafety.co.uk

As a health and safety consultant, when I talk about health and safety as a key component in the sustainability of a business, more often that not I will be asked ‘what has health and safety has got to do with sustainability?’ Well, rather a lot actually – when talking about the long term sustainability of your business, the health, safety and wellbeing of your employees is key.

Changing the Image of Health and Safety

To really appreciate the role of health and safety in sustainability, we need to reframe it. For as long as I can remember health and safety has been viewed (generally) as being burdensome; the focus on keeping the director out of jail and doing what is necessary to tick the boxes and keep the regulators away. Of course, we can’t ignore legal compliance and minimum requirements must be set; but the focus of health and safety should be on looking after your people because you want to – they are your most important asset. If ever I’m lucky enough to walk in to see a new client and hear the words ‘I want to took after my people’ or words to that effect – my heart sings, I know we are on the same page; their priority is the wellbeing of their people and health and safety will be implemented with purpose not resentment.

Changing Priorities

The world is shifting – we know sustainability is key to the future of the planet. Focusing on the profitability of an organisation above everything else might bring an increase in profits, but failing to look after your people and consider your impact on the environment is unlikely to bring longevity in today’s business climate. Employees quite rightly are beginning to prioritise their wellbeing and the sustainability credentials of employers when scanning the job market. Likewise, consumers and clients are becoming much more savvy, choosing ethically and sustainably produced products.

What makes a Business Sustainable?

The Triple Bottom Line concept identifies 3 components of the business sustainability model.

PEOPLE-PROFIT-PLANET

These 3 components are inextricably linked – to be truly sustainable, a business cannot focus on one to the detriment of the others.

So, back to health and safety. Good health and safety management plays a key role in looking after your people. A well designed and relevant health and safety management system will work for and with your organisation.  A health and safety manual should not sit on a shelf gathering dust only to be dragged out when the regulators come to visit – I’ve seen that many times and it achieves nothing.

It's all about the Bigger Picture

Investing in good proportionate health and safety management and creating a culture where employees feel safe, listened to, able to raise concerns and valued will unlock discretionary effort, increase productivity, reduce staff turnover (reducing the associated loss of skills and knowledge and the inevitable recruitment cost), reduce sickness and lost time following incidents. All of this will impact positively on the business in terms of reducing costs, reducing downtime, driving up profits, improving public image and reputation. It will of course also achieve the ‘traditional’ aims of health and safety by reducing the incidence and costs of accidents and increasing legal compliance and increase in profits.

Greater profit allows for better financial reward for employees, investment in the local economy,  greater investment in green technology and sustainable practices which again feed employee satisfaction and reputation whilst benefitting the planet. Everyone wins. For me People-Profit-Planet is a cycle of continuous improvement that has no beginning and no end and should be actively and passionately pursued. We should be constantly striving and improving our working conditions for our people and fairly rewarding people for their efforts to create a sustainable standard of living, a sustainable society, ongoing investment in green technology and genuine ethical and sustainable practices and overall, a sustainable planet.

In this conversation Yvette Whitwam of Beanstalk HR and I talk about our personal experience of peri-menopause and it's impact on us as people running our own businesses. We discuss how employers can support their employees from an HR and health and safety perspective.

I’ve been to see a couple of new clients recently. I’ve left both meetings feeling frustrated and annoyed. Not with my clients, but because they have both received extremely poor service from so called ‘health and safety consultants’.

Now, I’m not knocking health and safety consultants – I am one, after all. But I am knocking health and safety consultants and consultancies that appear to be trying to exploit the knowledge gap that some businesses may have.
Many firms don’t necessarily know enough about health and safety to really know what support they need, what they can expect or what they are signing up for.

Some less scrupulous consultants promise to provide a tailored health and safety management system and then slap a ring binder containing nothing but generic template documents on the table and claim everything necessary is contained within for example.

I am also knocking health and safety consultancies that promise to give health and safety advice and support, place businesses on a 12 month contract – with difficult cancellation clauses – and then simply quote legislation down the phone without giving real advice and assistance.

This has led me to consider, what (or who) is a good health and safety consultant and what can you expect from a good health and safety consultant.

I guess there are two aspects to consider. Firstly the person (consultant) themselves, and then the service that they will (or won’t) provide.

Knowledge and experience

Well, there is the obvious of course. A good health and safety consultant needs to have knowledge and experience in health and safety. They should be able to demonstrate this through their working experience and their qualifications.

Knowledge and experience of your industry is also helpful, but not necessarily essential. Many health and safety skills are transferable between industries and most experienced health and safety professionals will have a network of trusted, competent professionals from whom they can seek advice and direction.

But, you do need a consultant who will be honest and tell you if something is outside of their competency. No health and safety professional can ever know everything, no matter what they tell you. The important thing is that they know their limitations and are willing to do the necessary research to gain the knowledge and information they need to help you.

Charterships and accreditations can be important. They can be a good way of demonstrating that knowledge is kept up to date, but they are not the be all and end all.

Consultants may be able to demonstrate continual professional development in other ways. I have been asked if membership of the OSHCR is important – in my opinion, no. There is already a professional body for safety professionals (IOSH) which requires the maintenance of a CPD cycle.

I don’t really see what OSHCR offers in addition to this.

Someone you like

Knowledge and experience, are the starting point of a great health and safety consultant. But just as important is to engage someone who you feel you can develop a strong working relationship with. This is someone you are going to need to be honest with, and who in turn needs to be honest with you, and in truth from time to time you may have to have some difficult discussions. Therefore, it is important that you actually like the person. I would never advocate engaging a consultant without meeting them first because you need to be able to develop a strong and respectful working relationship.

If you are engaging a larger consultancy, you should ask whether you will receive support from the same consultant each time because different people work in different ways. Consistency in support and delivery is very important.
The last thing on my list of the top 3 things to look for when engaging a consultant is how willing are they to adapt their service to meet your needs?

The service

Does the consultant show you a list of packages and say these are the services we offer?

Or do they talk to you about your business, determine the current status of your health and safety arrangements, listen to any constraints you might currently have, ask you about the type of support you think you would like and then make a proposal based on your specific needs? A proposal which of course can be amended if you feel it doesn’t meet your needs.

I recently heard of a business who engaged a consultancy on a 12-month contract believing they were getting specifically written documentation and telephone advice whenever required because that is what had been agreed (verbally). They signed a contract based on this. They were given a folder full of generic templates (many not even relevant) and no further assistance was given to make these specific to the organisation. When they tried to access telephone advice, they were quoted legislation but no advice or guidance on how to comply. Essentially, they paid for a service that they could not use, that was not designed for them and which did not meet their needs. At the end of their 12-month period, they tried to cancel but missed the 4 week cancellation window and the consultancy tried to roll the contract over. They are now engaged in legal proceedings.

At Buzz Safety, we take great pride in writing the contract to suit the needs of the customer, but in addition, all contracts can be revised to suit the customer’s needs and cancelled at any period with 1 month notice. I have no desire to hold customers to payments if they no longer wish or are able to use our services. Crucifying and creating a financial burden on SMEs is not what we do, we care about the businesses that we work with.

We are always happy to discuss your health and safety needs, whether large or small and can provide a service to suit you.