Supervisor: Make sure you're wearing your hi-vis tomorrow health and safety will be here.
Employee: *eye roll* Wow health and safety make things difficult.
How many times have you heard this in your workplace?
Each year the HSE produce the statistics for work related accidents and Ill health, and despite health and safety becoming a larger part of all businesses, every year there are still significant numbers of accidents that occur, but if we already know about health and safety, and we already do our jobs the safest way possible why do we still have the number of work-related injuries and ill-health we do?
KEY FACTS
The truth is we still pick speed over safety, in 2022 it was reported that there were 0.6 million non-fatal injuries, 1.8 million cases of work-related Ill health and 123 fatal accidents. Work related mental Ill health is on the rise with 0.9 million suffering from work related mental ill-health.
The human health and social work and public administration and defence industries had significantly higher rates of work-related ill health.
Agriculture, forestry and fishing, construction, accommodation and food service activities and wholesale and retail trade (including motor vehicle repair) had significantly higher rates of workplace injuries.
A large percentage of accidents could be avoided if correct supervision, information, and training is provided and more needs to be done by organisations to bring these statistics down further. Organisations should have risk assessments to reduce the risk of injury, ill-health, and mental ill-health to their employees this includes an organisation stress risk assessment.
Do you think you could be doing more to avoid accidents in your workplace? Maybe you require some extra help to see where your short comings are. Remember that you can have a direct impact on the number of people who suffer from injury or illness whilst at work.
