Health and Safety at Logson Group

As World Day for Safety and Health at Work takes place our Head of Group Health and Safety, Dan Watts, shares a little more about the impact the day has on the wider health and safety sector and how our teams across the group establish, implement, and uphold the highest levels of health, safety and wellbeing in our workplaces.

World Day for Safety and Health at Work brings health and safety in the workplace to the forefront of the media, raises some serious concerns and delivers strong messaging surrounding how health and safety is implemented and what can have an impact on it.

This year’s message is ‘The impacts of climate change on occupational health and safety’ and the International Labour Organisation (ILO) will issue a new report to support that entitled ‘Ensuring safety and health at work in a changing climate.’

It will be interesting to see what the report states, however, prior to its issue, it made me think about the outside influences that can impact on how we deliver exemplary standards of health and safety in the workplace.

We Make it Safe

The Logson Group has a robust and clearly defined health and safety vision – We Make it Safe. Originally established in 2019 as Make it Safe, the ‘We’ element was added in 2022 to reinforce the part that we all play in keeping ourselves and each other safe.

With three clear objectives and three clear principles, the vision is communicated to all staff at their induction and is intrinsically linked in our health and safety communications and ever evolving strategy.

Our objectives are:
• Operate an effective health and safety management system
• Continually improve our health and safety culture
• Effectively control our significant risks

Our principles are:
• We all play an active part and engaged part in making it safe
• We challenge each other to improve
• We all treat each other fairly and with respect

Together they play a huge part in our health, safety, and wellbeing but also the positive culture of the business.

Outside influences

So, whilst the vision, the strategy and the policy are strong, our teams are also educated to be aware of outside influences that could change familiar situations and make them less safe.

Outside influences could be things like:

The weather – Have paths and car parks been gritted on icy mornings?
Visitors to site – All our visitors are given a health and safety briefing upon arriving at our sites and are accompanied whilst they are there to minimise any negative impacts to our people.

Contractors – We ensure that all the contractors we use are competent to carry out the works required and make them aware of our site rules and emergency procedures by inducting them on arrival to site. We check that they have suitable and sufficient risk assessments and method statements for the works they will be undertaking, and they are monitored throughout to ensure these are being followed.

Human factors – these play a significant role in influencing health and safety outcomes, as they encompass the psychological, physiological, and behavioural aspects of how we all work. In turn this impacts our decision-making, attention, perception, and response to hazards in the workplace. We work hard to train our staff to think through their decision making and to understand that safety and wellbeing always comes first.

Machinery breakdown or failure – Do colleagues know what to do when a machine breaks, malfunctions, or fails? Where the e-stops are located? How do they report the fault? This is covered right from the beginning as part of their training and refreshed regularly.

Being aware of these outside influences, whatever they may be, raises awareness with our colleagues and helps us to deliver against our We Make It Safe vision, objectives, and principles.

How we make it possible

Each of our sites has designated health and safety professionals that are trained and qualified in following all necessary requirements and the We Make It Safe vision. All our colleagues are provided with the necessary training and encouraged to work with each other to report areas for improvement when they see them.

It is the outside influences that we mentioned earlier, that can provide challenges and changes. If all our team members are always vigilant, we can minimise the negative impact these external influences could have on our safety.