Keeping the Board out of Trouble

  In more than one company I worked for, the chief executive made clear in their Health & Safety Policy Statement that H&S was a key priority. I did sometimes wonder however whether some of the middle managers had “read the memo”, as some of them seemed to take a very gung-ho approach to their responsibilities and – dare I say – even took pride in finding creative ways of dodging H&S rules. I wondered too whether the chief executive would be comfortable with the shopfloor decisions that were sometimes made in their name and, whether they would be equally happy for the buck to stop with them in a court of law if things went wrong? It was a difficult dilemma, as I needed the support of line managers to do my job, and couldn’t be seen to be “grassing them up” to the directors in an adverse audit report. On the other hand, I owed a responsibility to those same directors to watch their backs and keep them out of trouble.  

Process-driven

The answer is to “depersonalise” the health & safety management system – to make it driven by processes, not individuals.  

The Turnbull report

At the end of the 1990’s, after a series of financial scandals, the Turnbull Report recommended that Stock Exchange listed companies should have: “robust systems of internal control, covering not just narrow financial risks but also risks relating to the environment, business reputation and health and safety”. This led the HSE in turn to produce their seminal guidance: Leading health and safety at work, which recommended that Boards should appoint a non-executive to act as scrutineer – ensuring the robustness of H&S processes.

 

Named board director

Now at this stage, you might be thinking that the obvious person to report to the Board on health & safety matters would be the director in overall charge of managing the H&S team. However, I would argue NO: it’s too much like marking one’s own homework. A better person would be someone independent of the H&S structure – for example a finance director, company secretary, head of Legal, or a non-exec looking over the shoulder of the H&S director and giving an impartial, objective critique that the H&S team are delivering the results they are supposed to.  

Risk committees

If your company is fortunate to possess a risk committee, then that is the logical place to evaluate health & safety risks. If not, Health & Safety needs to be a standing item on the main Board agenda. Spoiler alert: the best companies place H&S first on the agenda, not last where it can be quickly glossed over in the rush for the exits after a lengthy Board meeting has overrun.  

Meaningful agenda

So, what to report to the Board? Don’t fall into the trap of reporting a handful of – usually minor – incident statistics to the Board, which will lull directors into a sense that all is well in the health & safety world. Give them a meaningful dashboard of key performance indicators, and how well (or how badly!) the company is performing against them. It was for this reason that Arinite published its earlier blog: My best ever piece of H&S advice – design a dashboard for your directors. Go read it!  

Contact us

Arinite clients appreciate we provide practical, no-nonsense advice about what you need to do to establish and maintain a safe and healthy working environment. Our team of health and safety consultants take pride in keeping health and safety simple. If you need to call upon our expert assistance, or just for an informal chat, please call our office 0207 947 9581, or enquire through our website. Jan Mirkowski