Posted By Alan Higgins We have been told that each department must have its own “mission statement” to state clearly its purpose. After much thought and discussion (one hour on a Friday afternoon!), the health and safety department (me and my two assistants) came up with something we thought was pretty good along the lines of “contributing to the overall performance of the company and ensuring the wellbeing of staff by facilitating the effective management of health and safety risks by the company’s line managers”. It’s been rejected as “lacking focus” and our MD has said that the reason he employs the three of us is simple: “to keep him, the other directors and the company out of the courts”, that anything else we do is “icing on the cake” and our mission statement should reflect this. I can see his point and I think that the mission statement we will now propose will say simply that the mission of the health and safety department is “to ensure compliance by the company with health and safety law”. Has anyone else had to prepare a mission statement for their health and safety department? Did you manage to come up with something inspiring and get it accepted?

Posted By David Brede To ensure that in the event of a H&S case coming to court that the senior management team have bags packed and tickets to Brazil or somewhere where there is no extradition treaty with the UK.

Posted By Stuart Nagle Alan. You and your colleagues have gone to a lot of trouble with your mission statement, only to have it rejected, but I do think it was a bit wooley.... “contributing to the overall performance of the company and ensuring the wellbeing of staff by facilitating the effective management of health and safety risks by the company’s line managers”. I can understand the director being less than happy, as you state in quite a few words of multiple sylibles, what you do in a fairly covert sort of manner. I suggest the following stategy; 1) get together again and all of write down lists of exactly what you do. 2) make a list of exactly whom you do it with 3) decide which things are the most important 4) decide which things fall under another unbrella (i.e. 'ensuring the well being' might equal health and/or safety and/or welfare, so the term health safety and welfare might be more distict and focused than ''ensuring the well being' - get the drift...) 5) everone is your customer - internally and externally - and what you do is provide a service to them 6) don't think think your mission statement has to be a 'full' statement, it could for example include items bullet-pointed under a main heading statement... 7) try and use simpler words with less sylibles 8) seek the opinions of your customers as to what you do for them - and importantly, what they call it... So they can relate to your mission statement by the language used 8) If you still have a rejection, ask your director for the assistance of someone who has has some training in this area and can assist you 9) if this is not forcoming, have a loomat the internet via search engine ... there is lots of advice and information out there... Regards... Stuart

Posted By Ian Waldram Has your MD has his attention drawn to any of the 'Business Benefits' case studies on the HSE website - they are not woolly at all! Also, does he employ HR advisors simply to advise him how not to end up in an Industrial Tribunal, or mainly to advise him and other managers how to help employees to contribute all they can to the business?

Posted By peter gotch Alan Further to Ian's and other comments, your MD needs to be influenced towards considering HSW as an overall benefit, rather than an evil necessity. Above all, avoid signing up to a mission statement that has you three "ensuring compliance" - you can't! You can assist others to do so, through guidance, training, audit etc. Good luck, Peter

Posted By Raymond Rapp Alan The notion that 'good safety makes good business' or 'industry best practice over compliance' does not apply with many employers like your MD. I suspect you will be unable to convert him but you might have the last laugh if you can include the acronym A.C.E. within your mission statement. It stands for A... Covering Exercise ! On a more serious note, the choice is quite simple; stick to your principles or be damned. Paraphrasing Oscar Wilde: 'The manager, knows the cost of everything and the value of nothing.' Regards Ray

Posted By Alan Higgins Thank you all for your helpful comments and suggestions. We had a further meeting this afternoon and agreed that it is not the job of the health and safety team to ensure legal compliance but instead our mission statement should indicate that the health and safety team “advises the Company’s line managers as to what they need to do to ensure compliance with health and safety law” and then monitors and reports on their progress. I just now need to package it into a few punchy bullet points and I have been told that it is very likely to be accepted. No movement however, at least for the time being, on going beyond legal compliance as the standard which we are aiming to achieve. The view of the MD is that, as the law defines the minimum standard we must achieve, until we have achieved it there is little point in looking beyond it. He also said that he feels that UK health and safety law already sets a pretty high and challenging standard. We have been told that the door would be open for further discussions and revision of our mission statement as and when we can report to the board that we are reasonably satisfied that all parts of the Company are broadly compliant with health and safety law. We are not unhappy with the outcome.