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According to the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA), UK industry forfeits 36 million working days every year due to injury or ill-health. As well as the obvious moral imperative in maintaining a roster of happy and, above all, healthy employees, employers should be equally as conscious of the negative impact of inadequate health and safety on revenue.

In 2005, Robinson Plastic Packaging lost 130 days’ work due to injuries and ill health. The firm, based in Kirkby-in-Ashfield, Nottinghamshire, decided it had to do something radical and offered staff training up to NVQ Level 1 in health and safety at work. Health and safety manager John McFarlane explains: It was initially intended to be on a ‘first come first served’ basis, but the overwhelming response led to it being rolled out for all 75 shopfloor employees.

Robinson also introduced shopfloor safety representatives, who must report concerns to management and ensure staff follow correct health and safety procedures.

In 2006, as a result of these changes, Robinson only lost two days due to injury. There were also no accidents serious enough to be reported under RIDDOR (Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations) for the first time in a decade. The following year, the British Plastics Federation awarded Robinson a Best Health and Safety Initiative prize in recognition. McFarlane says the key is to involve the workforce in the day to day issues of health and safety, to encourage greater participation and co-operation.

Paul Lewis MBE, operations director at Connect Packaging, agrees on the need to involve staff. You can’t just enforce health and safety from the top down. It is the people on the shopfloor who have to make it happen, he says. In 2007, the Essex-based firm, which manufactures board packaging for retail and transit, won a gold medal from RoSPA. The gold medal is awarded to companies that have achieved five consecutive gold awards.

The awards require firms to submit a portfolio of information, demonstrating a commitment to health and safety. Lewis says: It is important to have a culture of health and safety, rather than bolting it on. Connect employs an external inspector to come in once a week to monitor the workplace. When you work somewhere, you become very familiar with it and you can become complacent. It is good to have the view of someone from outside. The firm operates a five-year plan on health and safety training for staff. One year we’ll do hand awareness, the next eye safety, then manual handling and so on, explains Lewis.

Cultural impetus
The important thing to bear in mind is that the vast majority of accidents can be easily prevented by adopting reasonably practical measures, says RoSPA’s occupational health specialist Roger Bibbings. There are a lot of companies that have made progress on their management systems or the technology side, but still struggle to deal with safe behaviour; it’s the last link in the safety chain and it’s an important part of the mix, he says.

Ever since legislation was first introduced in 1833, and latterly the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974, making the workplace a safer environment has been a carrot and stick exercise with more emphasis placed on retribution than on reward. The Corporate Manslaughter Act (2007) has yet to bring any packaging manufacturer to trial, but has the power to exact a fine of upwards of 10% of turnover should an action be successful, with the leeway into mainstream legislation to extend prosecution to named board-level individuals.

In the meantime, the Health & Safety Executive (HSE) has sufficient clout to deliver a short, sharp shock when working practices are deemed to be sub-standard, as most recently evidenced by fines imposed on Corus Packaging Plus and Dairy Crest of £250,000 and £5,000 for an employee’s death and broken arm, respectively.

The HSE investigated Corus Packaging Plus following the death of Francis Coles, who was hit on the head by a piece of machinery at the Trostre Tin Plate works in Llanelli in January 2003. Corus pleaded guilty to breaching the Health and Safety at Work Act and the Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations. In February 2008, Swansea Crown Court imposed a fine of £250,000 and damages of £42,965. HSE inspector Alan Strawbridge said, at the time, the case should serve as a warning for employers to comply with legal obligations.

While it is mandatory for any company employing more than five people to have a health and safety policy in place, the extent to which that impacts upon or integrates within an overall business model is effectively self-regulated. A proportion of packaging manufacturers may wilfully disregard what’s required of them; a greater number, however, under-assess the potential for risk through ignorance, says the BPIF’s health and safety manager Simon Lunken.

People often aren’t aware of what they should be doing. Until you spend time in helping them to run through a risk assessment check-list they literally don’t see the dangers. Small organisations are pretty much bound to need assistance, he says.

Work-related road safety, ‘slips and trips’, manual handling and machinery safety are all aspects of health and safety
of which packaging manufacturers should be aware. Transport related accidents are a key target. From 2001 to 2007, the HSE recorded more than 7,000 accidents involving forklifts, including 51 fatalities.

The industry insurers are pushing H&S because they’re acutely aware of liability. How risk is managed is also figuring within CSR requirements: it’s increasingly one of the hoops you have to jump through to secure new business, says Lunken.

Expert advice
The BPIF, and other organisations such as RoSPA and the British Safety Council as well as a host of H&S consultancies, can provide expert input. The BPIF H&S scheme provides a two-year management programme, including a detailed audit of existing safety measures and onward recommendations, staff training, noise surveys, manual handling assessments and a whole raft of additional do’s and don’ts. Outsourcing expert advice is a sensible course of action, says Lunken, as many companies fail to take the bigger picture into account when self-assessing risk of accidents.

Most organisations tend to be reactive; they’re not aware or the true financial implication that an accident has on the business. Research carried out by the HSE shows that for every insured pound, a manufacturer is likely to incur £8-36 in uninsured loss, excluding any fines that may be imposed. In the event of an accident, they’ve got to pay the employee for time off, possibly bring in extra staff or redeploy internally, institute additional training and spend non-productive time investigating the incident.

Above all, a poor H&S record is an indication of the way a company runs its business. Once established, inadequate practices can be hard to fix.

PREVENTING SLIP UPS

* Everything emanates from adopting a positive mind set. This means treating health and safety as you might quality control or eco-proactive credentials, and making it an integral component within the business strategy

* Seek expert help in addressing your risk assessment – danger areas exist over and above ensuring the obvious things are done, such as good housekeeping, pedestrian-free traffic areas, robotic assistance in materials handling, machinery guards, multi-lingual signage, etc

* Designate a health and safety manager to optimise strategies by engaging right across the workforce

* Training and yet more training. According to the BPIF’s Simon Lunken: The H&S manager should have either a certificate in managing safety from IOSH (Institute of Occupational Safety & Health) or the NEBOSH general certificate (National Examination Board of Occupational Safety & Health)

*The BPIF offers the IOSH course as well as a one-day training session for line managers and supervisors that covers legislation and relevant management issues

* Don’t overlook the health side of health and safety. Stress-related lost time is the biggest challenge. Employers can offer support through lighter workloads, counselling, social events and spotting problems before they arise

CASE STUDY: IMPRESS MERTHYR TYDFIL

t’s taken Impress Merthyr Tydfil the better part of five years to transform its operation from a site that was recording 100 accidents a year to sporting a clean sheet of 400 consecutive days in which no lost time at all was incurred.

As a result, it has just been awarded the British Safety Council’s Sword of Honour – one of only 40 companies worldwide to have its H&S achievements thus recognised annually and the first Welsh factory to pick up the award for the past 10 years. Other 2008 sword-holders include BP, Cadbury’s and Microsoft.

The problems at Merthyr Tydfil stemmed from previous owner US Can’s decision to relocate production from its Southall plant, explains health and safety co-ordinator John O’Malley. The net result was that the rate of accidents went through the roof. We had an awful lot of plant lying around the place as everything that had been ripped out of Southall was just put on a lorry and deposited here. Lost time was a particular issue. All in all, we’ve paid out more than £500,000 in compensation alone over the past five years.

Having signed up to the BSC scheme, the plant introduced wide-ranging measures at least compliant with ISO 18001. While that level of certification is the equivalent to three stars with the BSC, we’re now rated as having five-star standards,’ says O’Malley.

The plant does its own training in-house, and has recently been named as the Impress pilot site for a vehicle and safety programme.

It’s generally accepted that firms with high safety standards also have high quality standards – and by definition, high productivity, says O’Malley. The three of them come together. It’s all to do with business culture. Keeping our people safe is vital and commercially important.