Happy Birthday Health & Safety at Work Act

The Health and Safety at Work Act, the primary piece of legislation covering occupational health and safety in Great Britain and upon which most of the other British health and safety legislation is founded celebrated its 49^th Birthday on 31 July. The main thrust of the Act is to ensure that those who create risks should manage them and since its introduction, a significant reduction in fatal and non-fatal injuries has been realised.

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has recently published the 2022-23 work-related fatality figures that showed a total of 135 employees were killed in work-related incidents.

The greatest number of fatalities continue to be in construction, with other industries as shown in the table below:

The data shows that agriculture, forestry and fishing have the greatest number of fatalities per 100,000 workers and this is closely followed by the waste and recycling industry. The 3 highest causes of injury were reported as falls from height, being struck by a moving object, and being struck by a vehicle. Not withstanding these fatalities which are higher than the figure of 123  in 2021–22, the Act has ensured that the United Kingdom remains one of the safest places to work.

At Axil Integrated Services we place health and safety at the forefront of everything we do. We ensure all our employees are made aware of the key duties within the Act that we (as the employer) have towards them and members of the public and what therefore they can expect, and the duties our employees have to themselves and others who might be affected by what they do, or don’t do. These key messages form a fundamental part of a new employee’s induction and continuous training.

As a part of this,  we ensure all equipment is safe to use and explain to our employee’s their  duty is to follow the training that we provide and that their part in this is that they must complete any pre-use inspection checks to ensure the plant remains safe to use, reporting defects as they arise and removing the equipment from service if required.

We engage with our staff in developing risk assessments to encourage ownership rather than imposing these from an office. We have our own in-house trainers for mobile plant and equipment, and for manual handling, and these trainers provide appropriate information, instruction, training, and supervision.

Our approach to developing and maintaining competence (the ability to undertake responsibilities and to perform activities to a recognised standard on a regular basis) promoted by the Office for Rail and Road (ORR) forms a fundamental element of our training procedure. ORR proffered competence has four stages:

• unconscious incompetence – when you’re unaware of what you need to do to act in a competent way

• conscious incompetence – when you begin training and become aware of what you don’t know

• conscious competence – when you’ve completed enough training to complete a task in a competent way and you’re aware of this

• unconscious competence – when you carry out tasks in a fully competent way and you’re unaware of this because your behaviour has become habitual.

With ‘unconscious competence’, an employee could continue to perform competently. On the other hand, their performance could deteriorate if they:

– unconsciously develop bad habits

– don’t keep up to date with best practice

– don’t regularly use their skills or knowledge.

Training is therefore coupled with assessment and reassessment of competence to ensure our employees continue to work effectively and safely.

When we have brought new staff into Axil as a part of a new contract, a team from Axil engages with the onboarding from inductions and e-learning courses to hands-on training and subsequent monitoring.

We recognise that health and safety is a journey rather than a destination and continue to strive for a  culture of interdependency with felt leadership, where our employee have a pride in working for us and are looking out for one another.