FEATURE


real overhaul and this was my focus in my first few months in post.


At the same time I realised that I was the only qualified person at NEBOSH and IOSH level within the company. I asked myself, 'how on earth am I going to achieve this'? The answer was to start with the man who would end up in the dock if it all went wrong; Simon Kayll our CEO, and board level engagement was the only route to make this work. I knew I needed them on board and they needed to empower me and resource my strategy correctly to deliver the required changes. This was not as easy as I first anticipated because the Board really believed at first that our offices were a low-risk environment and therefore we didn’t need to do that much to address the issues I had discovered.


TRAINING IS ESSENTIAL I wasted no time at all in booking my


facilities managers onto a NEBOSH General Certificate course and I also booked the General Council and Operations Director onto the IOSH Senior Executive’s Safety course. Having these key players trained at the correct level would ensure that we were fully supported as they would then understand the moral, financial and legal requirements we needed to achieve to be compliant. This was a two-fold approach; board level understanding and support along with operational level understanding at the practitioner level in each of our offices. It also spread the burden of what was initially a very challenging task.


I then worked closely with one of my newly NEBOSH qualified FMs to reconstruct the health and safety policy from scratch. I used the services of Barbour EHS, who provided an on-line facility. They have some very good policy and enabling arrangement templates. These are up-to-date and compliant with all current legislation but they are only a template prompting you towards the key areas of company level input. Some did not need much additional information but we worked hard


www.tomorrowsfm.com


to expand these, as we wanted to address all the key areas, rather than just conduct a box-ticking exercise. It took nearly six months of ‘in house’ effort.


Hiring a consultant would have been quicker, but we wanted to make it our policy and invest our time into making it fit-for-purpose so we persevered and completed it ourselves.


I wanted to invest in further training and to spread the responsibility of health and safety at the departmental line manager level. This did meet with some initial opposition but because we had the board level buy-in we secured funding to train line managers and a safety representative in each wing of each floor of each office. Initially I wanted these managers and representatives trained to IOSH Safety Manager level but due to a large programme of internal change management this could not be achieved, so I discussed the issue with Astutis, a local health and safety training provider in Wakefield and we constructed a bespoke training package, which would train the volunteer staff on a two-day course.


On completion, volunteers fully understood the moral, financial and legal requirements under HSE legislation and had received sufficient training for a normal office environment, which meant that they could spot hazards and complete a departmental risk assessment of their working areas. They would be fully supported at all times by my facilities staff but with their training, they could be the eyes and ears of the department. This collaborative approach between line managers and my facilities staff combined to deliver a far more effective health and safety management team.


REALISING THE RESULTS Now we had a policy and


arrangements that were fully up- to-date, executive level buy-in from trained board members, supported by qualified Facilities practitioners at strategic and operational level, helped within the departments by hazard aware and trained line managers and safety reps. The icing on the cake was


to establish a Safety Committee. This would be chaired by the newly trained Operations Director, with myself acting as secretary, and made up of the Facilities Managers and safety trained line managers, along with fire wardens and first aiders. We also have the benefit of quite a few doctors within the company so we added an ‘in house’ doctor for good measure.


INDUCTION TRAINING


AND E-LEARNING The final piece of the jigsaw was engagement with our talent and development team, who agreed to purchase an online e-learning package, which was introduced as part of our health and safety induction on the first day for all new staff. This was complimented with the introduction of a health and safety mandatory annual online training module for all staff. It is now incorporated into our company’s total rewards pay package and as such you cannot receive a staff bonus unless you have completed this training module.


CONCLUSION This regime took almost a year to


establish. We have already driven the safety culture of the company to a much higher level and I’m looking to refresh the policy and arrangements now that they are a year old, as legislation has changed. I receive weekly e-bulletins from the HSE and IOSH to keep me updated with the latest changes and we are about to commence a bi-monthly company safety news bulletin, as a project for one of my assistant facilities managers. We are also introducing a ‘Don’t walk by’ strategy, with the aim of encouraging staff to report concerns to our facilities helpdesk if they think something is wrong.


This was an uphill struggle initially, but if you have a visionary strategy that is fully supported and resourced correctly at CEO and Board level and you inject the correct level of training, then facilities managers can really have a positive impact on the health and safety culture of any organisation.


www.iosh.co.uk TOMORROW’S FM | 21


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