Workplace accidents are in the rise with statistics showing that almost 30% of fatal injuries were caused in construction sites in the year 2010-2011. This sums up to the maximum number of fatalities in industry in the UK. The most dangerous activity is working at heights in construction work.

Health and Safety consultant, Maria Anderson of Workplace Law reeled off statistics while warning industries that neglect of health and safety regulations would result in severe consequences as in the case of Gary Hampton of Fenton who fell from a height of 7 meters while working on a scaffolding in a factory at Stoke-on-Trent.

The scaffolding company, Scaffold Company Fred Lewis Ltd, employed the 28 year old who was a father to 3 children, to fix the scaffolding for the factory on Plantation Road in Newstead Industrial Estate. It was while fixing the scaffolding that the weak roof gave way and Gary Hampton fell through.

Six weeks in hospital for multiple injuries to his thighs, both wrists, vertebrae and lungs, has left him still suffering from severe pain in the left leg and out of work as he is unable to take on further manual labor.

The scaffolding company was prosecuted, heard at the Fenton Magistrate’s Court and pleaded guilty to breaching Section 2(1) of the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974. They paid a fine of £10,000 and further £19,000 costs.

HSE inspectors reported that a proper survey into the job specifics had not been done nor had the employees been trained. No supervision of work took place. Maria Anderson stressed that this accident could have been prevented had the company chalked out a strategy for work, made a basic risk assessment and taken the precaution of a planned work schedule with adequate supervision!

A major accident at Palletways (UK) Ltd involving a forklift operator highlighted the negligence of the management in risk assessment and in providing essential emergency training to personnel.

Mr.Hill, the forklift operator was loading a computer cabinet on to a trailer when he noticed it was wobbling. Hoping to catch it, he jumped down but it toppled forward and caught him on his head, knocking him down. He was bleeding in the head when the depot manager took him along in search of the first aid team whom he did not even know, when he could have left him in the care of his colleagues. Later the first aid unit drove him by car to the hospital without properly assessing the extent of his injuries.

He would have been better off if he had been attended to by paramedics in an emergency ambulance. He had to be airlifted to Heartlands Hospital in Birmingham where finally he was treated. Lack of proper management of this emergency left him partially disabled.

When investigating the accident at Palletways (UK) Ltd, Fradley Distribution Park, HSE inspectors confirmed that it was due to gross negligence on the part of the management to perform risk assessment of loading operations and also their lapse in providing training to personnel to tackle emergencies such as this. The incompetence of the depot manager and the first aid men were brought to light in the investigations.

The case was heard by Stafford Crown Court but Mr. Hill has not been able to work since the accident on the fatal day on 22nd August 2008.

The HSE impeached a company and its manager and imposed a fine of £10,000 for a fire incident that happened on August 10 2010. The Birmingham based firm RVB Investments UK Ltd and Clifford Leigh, the manager came under the axe when a fire was started when two workers cut a 1,000-volt live electric wire at a Telford industrial unit.

The case of the two RVB Investment workers was heard at the Telford Magistrates’ Court. Mr. David Rawlins (46) and Eamonn Osborne (53) were initiated to locate an underground water drip at a vacant unit of the company in Halesfield 5, Telford. They were told by Mr. Leigh to dig at a site outside the unit. When they had dug up the ground to approximately 40 cm, they cut through a live electric cable of 1,000 volts.

The two were swallowed up by a ball of fire endured severe burns to their faces, arms and hands. They were carried to hospital by airways. The doctors thought the chances of Mr. Osborne making it alive were bleak as his injuries were severe.

The power of the fire was approximated as 4.3 million watts of energy. The intensity of the heat blew a 500-amp fuse at a nearby electrical substation and a part of the electrical breaker’s metal tool was annihilated.

Upon investigation, HSE found that RVB Investments had not considered the risks, checked for underground electrical cables or ensured secure digging, got site plans or planned safe system of work. In addition, the two men had no training with underground services’ risks.

In a release to press persons recently, Unite union strongly persuaded a prioritization of Government policies to make limits on driving hours of HGV (Heavy Goods Vehicles) drivers. In a bid to better the quality of Lorries plying the highways, Unite also urged the Vehicle and Operator Services Agency (VOSA) to standardize their infrastructure.

This comes after an announcement by the Government to allow a speed limit of 80mph as against the existing 70mph on the highways. Reacting to this sanction, Unite’s National Officer for Road Transport, Matt Draper, said that already the number of highway accidents is going up – 8 deaths and many more injuries of which 3 were lorry drivers. Added to the fact that haulage industry competitiveness was driving companies to goad their lorry drivers to the very edge of legal driving hours, the situation is leading to a potentially hazardous one, he commented.

As it is, drivers were working 45 hours per week (90 in a 2-week span) and per day 9 hours stretched to 10 hours twice a week is the permissible time. Drivers could be asked to drive only for 15 hours in a day with a minimum rest of 45 minutes every 4-5 hours. These are the legal limits and to these limits, drivers are being compelled while their terms are gradually deteriorating.

Mr. Matt Draper warned that conditions of the drivers, if not looked into would contribute to potentially dangerous situations, he advised that the Government prioritize HGV timings to minimize accidents!

Amazingly, more than one million people in Britain have gone through first hand some kind of violent behaviour at the work place within the last two years. Concurrently, plenty of staff cannot voice it if they face bullying as well as aggressive behaviour that can turn extremely violent at the work place. This is what has been discovered in the latest investigation conducted.

Overseers and specialists in jobs that pay well are more likely to be found in the group that encounters violent behaviour at the workplace.

Cardiff’s School of Social Sciences and Plymouth Business School that went ahead with this survey found that long-established work regulations are not able to handle violence and aggression in the office.

This survey was conducted on a workforce that was 4,000 and more. The things that were unearthed were truly astonishing:

9. 4.9% of office-goers have been privy to lack of sympathy at their place of work. This amount adds up to almost one million staff.
10. Approximately 3.8% of staff faced bodily consequences.
11. 30% of all employees were given deadlines that they could not manage and great workloads
12. In the order of every fourth worker has been talked to in a loud and angry manner or talked angrily
13. 13.3% of office goers have felt stressed at office at times.

Quite a few workers have been gutsy enough to voice this concern about hostility at work. Astoundingly, about 13% encountered this every single day. Most of these were victimized by people not within the office and as many as 72% of them were company clients. The people who were most at risk of being bullied were those in special fields like health and social work, education, and public administration and defence. Private sector workers faced this more in comparison to others.

This survey also brought to the forefront the violent behaviour and what outcomes it had on the workforce in Britain. There are as many as seven to eight million workers in Britain who have unreachable and unachievable deadlines and nobody to hear their woes.

Several times, staff at the managerial level has the most violent and aggressive behaviour displayed. This goes on to enhance the employee risk of encountering this kind of behaviour regularly. Supervisory duties for staff on permanent roles of the company put them at a far greater risk to be privy to aggressive and violent manner at the office.

Statistics released by HSE for injuries, illnesses and fatalities at workplaces in Britain from April 2010 to March 2011were published as follows:

• Major injuries including amputations, burns and fractures down from 26,268 in the previous year to 24,726. Rate at 99 workers per hundred thousand

• Illnesses or injury at work with break from work of more than 4 days comes down from 96,427 in 2009-2010 to 90,653 this year. Rate at 363.1 for 100,000 workers.

• Illness due to work or worsened by work factors – 1.2 million workers compared to 1.3 million workers last year. (500,000 were new illnesses)

• Death in work place rose to 171 workers in 2010-2011, only 146 in 2009-2010!

The Construction industry contributed 173.2 major injuries per 100,000 in 2010 to 2011 while the agriculture industry has an injury list numbering 221.9 per 100,000! The two industries together shared the highest levels of major injuries as well as an unusually large number of casualties.

Commenting on the HSE published statistics their Chairperson, Judith Hackitt, said that Britain had a lot to be happy about in reducing the number of major injuries and illnesses to workers but still had a lot to deal with in bringing down the number of deaths in work places. She said that Britain has one of the best health and safety records in Europe but would not reduce the commitment to reduce the risks causing injury and death at site offices.

New data released by the Federation of Small Business (FSB) states that in the last one-year illness related non-attendance has cost small companies an average of £1,500 each, while for almost 9% it cost not less than £5,000. Pointing to this needless cost affecting the normal functioning and growth of small firms, the FSB has recommended the Government to initiate a relief for them, which can aid them in reclaiming their statutory sick pay (SSP).

The FSB reasons that £1,500 loss to small firms yearly due to illness related non-attendance is too much, hence a relief formed by the Government with the per year National Insurance Contributions bill of under £45,000 for reclaiming SSP will help them tremendously. The FSB also suggests that the procedures and computations for using this relief should be similar to that of the mandatory maternity pay.

The study by FSB further showed that prolonged illness and its related non-attendance did not very often bother very small companies. However when employees did take long leaves due to illness, it badly affected their working and cost small firms heavily. The FSB cited their survey, ‘Voice of Small Business’ which noted that on an average small companies faced only 2.4 days of illness related non-attendance per staff per year which is less than half of the nation-wide average of 7.7 days per staff per year. The FSB also claimed that 25% of firms admitted during the survey that they did not face even a single absence due to illness while 81% confessed to not being bothered by long, continued non-attendance of staff due to illness. During the study 40% of the small companies admitted that handling illness related non-attendance and leave claim were the two most challenging features of work law.

The FSB further discussed the point that in the present circumstances using the Percentage Threshold Scheme for computing the amount of SSP that can be reclaimed is quite confusing for quite a few small companies. These companies will either lose considerable time in doing complex computations or pay to hire specialists to do this computing work to reclaim their SSP.

Speedibake is the producer of frozen bakery items for chief hypermarkets and food service agencies in West Yorkshire. They have an employee base that is multicultural and multilingual speaking more than 13 languages. This PePE facilitates to put across the safety instructions for them capably, regardless of the language barriers.

The signposts of the company’s two manufacturing units use PePE to demonstrate to their employees the things of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) they should use while carrying out a work. The operations hazard manager at Speedibake, Mark Edwards, one of the key persons behind this innovative plan strongly believes that PePE has proved to be an efficient way for passing on safety messages to their multilingual workers.

He spoke during the award acceptance. He added that although it is an effortless plan it has worked very well for their company. Since they have a multicultural and multilingual workforce, they had to develop methods for passing on safety messages easily and effectively beyond the language barriers. He explains that PePE effectively fits the bill; it illustrates what anyone has to be wearing, while he/she has to enter a particular region of the factory or while carrying out a specific chore.

PePE is an element of the total Safety First campaigns at Speedibake, which seeks to lower the amount of tragedies and bad health conditions at workplaces. Five years ago, there were 171 tragedies, which has lowered to just 22 the preceding year. Due to which the company missed only seven days of work.

The cartoon character PePE won the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health’s (IOSH) National Food and Drink Health and Safety Award, in partnership with the HSE, this year. It was because of its simplicity and competence in improving the safety at a multilingual workplace.

A new study on stress claims that a fifth of UK workers are so stressed about their work that leaving their job is always on their minds.

The study conducted by OPP, a leader in business psychology found 30% of the employees among the over 1,000 surveyed, to be feeling quite stressed out with their profession. On the same lines, 21% of the employees frequently had the thought of walking out from their job.

Lists of activities that are observed in normal life were given to the employees who were surveyed and asked about which of these activities caused them great stress. Compared to men, a higher percentage of women felt that all the activities listed like meeting and mixing up with new individuals, going to work, driving, making key judgments at their workplace were all very stressful, excluding shopping trips. In general, 51% of the employees felt that speaking in front a big audience made them quite jittery. It was noticed that employees in low or middle positions were more stressed out when they had to talk in front of a group rather than employees at higher or senior positions. 34% of the employees in UK felt stressed out when they had to make crucial decisions while 28% worried after having a look at their savings balance. 27% also admitted to be stressed out during Christmas time while 21% felt that using a public transportation was quite taxing. It was also noted that employees at senior or higher positions worried more while using a public transportation compared to their junior staff.

Employees were also regarding the things that they did to get rid of their stress. Over half or 66% of the employees preferred watching movies and television to release their tension while 49% chose to log on and surf different sites on the internet. 40% of them chatted with their friends and family members. At 31% each, taking a hot shower and consuming alcohol were also preferred choices of some employees to release their stress.

During the study, 41% of the female employees admitted to like eating to release their stress compared to the 29% men who stated the same. Likewise having a chat with their friends was preferred by 48% of the women compared to the much less number i.e. 31% men.

In collaboration with the Health and Safety Executive, the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health have decided to host the Innovation in Safety- Small Business Award, to recognize those firms who have come up with innovative ways to create a safer work environment for their workers.

This year they are all set to instigate the employers and Government to make strategies and policies to prevent injuries and ill health at work while saving money. The competition is based on Life Savings campaign.

The president of IOSH, Steve Granger, mentioned that these awards are to help those firms get a wider recognition for their work in health and safety concepts, from which they benefit from financially as well. It is promote a healthier and safer work environment.

By appreciating their work and rewarding them for the same, they wish to wake up and encourage those firms that have turned a blind eye towards such measures. It also aims to create awareness and guide them by showing them a way to come up with better and effective methods.

The winner of the first event was Anthony Tetlow; he was appreciated for his application for the Apple products like iPhone, iPad and iTouch, which simplified the health and safety for those working in the hairdressing salon.

The winner would be a receiver of a cash prize of £1,000 and a free pass for the exhibition and a conference held by IOSH, which would help them improve their work on health and safety.