Health and safety - how good is your employer?
24/01/05
The arrival of a new free HSE web-based tool, Health and Safety Performance Indicator (The Indicator),
means safety representatives and other employees of Small to Medium Sized Enterprises? can now track and assess how well their employer is managing health and safety year to year. The tool's development was supported by the DTI's Small Business Service, and enjoyed the support of the Department for Work and Pensions, the Small Business Service, the Association of British Insurers, the British Insurance Brokers Association and the Federation of Small Businesses.
Althoughaimed primarily at employers Safety Representatives can use the Demo Indicator to assist in discussions with employers in demonstrating the along significant impact of the Indicator when used by insurers in determining levels of insurance premiums that better reflect how well those employers were managing risks to health and safety.
The Indicator
The internet-based tool is generic in application and applies to all SME's, enabling comparisons across a wide range of activities, although this means it doesn't address the particular hazards some industries face which was considered impracticable. It is suggested that trade associations may want to consider developing questions along similar lines for their members.
The Indicator begins by asking a series of questions on:
key hazards that the developers found most SME's encounter; and
incident frequency.
A score out of ten is calculated for each.
Businesses using the indicator (who remain anonymous) can use their results to:
get a measure of how they are performing;
see areas where they might want to improve;
benchmark against others; and
share their results with anyone else should they decide to.
Large organisations
HSE is developing a Corporate Health and Safety Performance Indicator (CHaSPI) for use by large organisations to assist them to measure how effectively they are managing risks to health and safety and to put that information in a form that can inform key external stakeholders, including investors, insurers, trade unions and their members and the public. The electronic tool will be accessible via the web from May 2005.
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