Posted By michael smith I am trying to write a paper on the heading 'Is health and safety cost effective? I would love to hear from any one with views/advice on any subjects that I could consider. Any would be much appreciated, thanks.

Posted By Jim Walker Being Cynical, I'd sugggest that most companies view H&S as an aviod fines activity

Posted By John Murgatroyd "Perhaps, instead of a "danger specialist" I should be a "People maintenance engineer" " Human Resources Physical Assessment and Repair Consultant

Posted By Neil Budworth Dear Michael, HSE has a whole bunch of case studies on their web site which should help you with this paper. Best Regards Neil

Posted By Chris Packham Seen the news recently? A company fined £100,000 plus £30,000 costs due to a number of cases of occupational contact dermatitis? And this was just the fine - will there be claims for compensation and what might these amount to? I wonder what the effect on their employer liability insurance premiums will be. The HSE has estimated that the true cost of an accident (and this included ill health) was that for every £1 of insured losses there were between £8 and £36 of uninsured losses. The European Safety and Health Agency has estimated that the annual cost to the EU of occupational skin disease amounts to Euros 600 million. The majority of this could be avoided without any significant increase in industry's operating costs. Just a few ramblings. Chris

Posted By Martyn Hendrie Peter, I am not quite sure what point you are trying to make and note that your example quotes a "low risk" sector (insurance industry) I don't think that you can ignore the cost of an accident in higher risk industries, even if, thankfully, their occurrence is rare. In high risk, commercially competitive sectors like construction serious accidents lead to a whole range of costs that cannot usually be controlled or limited. These would include down time whilst company & HSE investigate; changes to Safe Systems of Work (that are reviewed by HSE before work restarts; claims from subcontractors for their works being delayed; loss of work as a result of clients looking elsewhere. These can run into tens or even hundreds of thousands of pounds. The difficult thing is trying to quantify the accident that did not happen because safe systems were in place. As a profession we generally can't identify our successes but are all too aware of when we fail.

Posted By jackw. Hi there is an amalgam of information studies etc relating to this. All indicate that it is cost effective to take H&S seriously. Check marks and spencer re how much they have saved on fire insurance by introducing a comprehensive fire safety strategy: training, store layout etc. Simple example. your never check your tyres or brakes on your 2 year old car (a top of the range merc ..for effect!!) ..you skid hit a wall car wrecked.. your insurance company won't pay cause your car wasn't maintained tyres illegal.. car brakes aren't working. balance cost of safety Vs cost of replacing car!..you skid hit another car, a child..you go into a bus stop full of people..you get the picture..I hope. = no argument good safety regime can save life, and reduce costs

Posted By Tony Brunskill Using cost as motivator is always difficult as it relies on individual perceptions of risk. The insurance industry generally do not rely on individual evaluations of business performance and band together by sector or discipline. The good performers lumped in with the bad for actuarial purposes. This has a detrimental affect on the business that has invested in safety and controls. It costs them the same and they become disenchanted. Senior Managers are by their very nature risk takers, they are entrepreneurial by nature and therefore risk favouring, they can be a difficult bunch to convince. Any insurance broker will tell you that the majority of insurance sales are based on the "gut feeling" of the FD/MD when deciding on the register of insurances. As society distances itself from risk we lessen the benefit that taking risks gives. We do not learn and the corporate memory is further shortened. Ultimately the best way to ensure due regard to risk is for the bigger players to "self regulate and impose on smaller organisations" however the larger organisations are backed by institutional investors who are only interested in profit. Ethical investment is more likely to be based on Environment that the people in it. There will always be episodal evidence of cost benefit for safety and over a short term these can be used to inform and motivate. Over the longer term there needs to be more corporate accountability. This need not be through further regulation but can be achieved by objective setting criteria imposed by such things as UKSE Listing Rules as with Corporate Governance. There are too many "if" scenarios to give a definitive answer. Is health and safety cost effective? Probably. Can we demonstrate it in all circumstances? Never. Should we rethink the approach to getting buy in? Definitely

Posted By Raymond Rapp Adrian If only life was that simple. There are many interventions that have to be implemented because of regulations, there is no choice in the matter. I suspect that if health and safety practitioners had a 'free hand' they would concentrate on many issues that they cannot do because of the various impositions. Despite many attempts to measure safety no one has found the 'Holy Grail'. Why? Simply because it does not exist. There are too many variables. Ray

Posted By Adrian Watson Raymond, Unfortunately, it is that simple! Quality had statistical measurement techniques from the 1920's (Skewart), but until Japan and Germany had a forced paradigm shifts in the 1940's, product quality did not improve measurably. The UK and US adopted these techniques in the 1980's when they recognised that they were losing business and becoming unprofitable. We have to work within the constraints of law but we don't have to be constrained by law. Whilst we are constrained to societal norms through legislation - health and safety law is supposed to be goal based; therefore, we can and should be measuring performance to determine whether our interventions are justifiable. For example, regulations require training but do not prescribe the method of training; therefore, a company or companies on a site could assess the efficiency and effectiveness of different interventions. If we did this we could then have evidence to discard practices that were inappropriate and promote those that were working. We would also discover what made interventions work and we would be able to provide evidence to the HSC and HSE as to what interventions are and are not warranted. Regarding complexity, everything is complex, we merely have the illusion that some things are simple. However, if experimentation were not carried out because of complexity, then doctors would still be blood letting. There are many simple techniques for dealing with complexity, ranging from proper observation of prospective studies using cohort studies, to randomised trials and the use of ANOVA and other statistical tools. Until we have a scientific knowledge base we are not professionals. If we are to be persuasive professions we need a large evidence-based knowledge base to justify our professional decisions. So lets be professional; let's design and carry out experiments and publish our findings to find out which of our interventions work and which one don't. Regards Adrian Watson

Posted By John Murgatroyd Difficult question. How much do consultants/advisors cost ? How much does the PPE cost ? How much management time is spent ? These are direct costs. So, what is the fine ? (if any) Extra insurance ? How much will all the safety requirements add to the per hour production costs ? Is there much chance of being caught ? As I said, difficult question !

Posted By Hands Micheal, you asked for comments on this subject. “Is health and safety cost effective?” You have already received a number of erudite replies to this premise. All appear to accept the premise without challenge and whilst some challenge the achievability, the acceptance is there that it ought, somehow, to be the case. This maybe due to what is considered the naturally correct thing to do so. It must be cost effective because the human cost is always too great. There are at least two levels of consideration. The first at a socio-economic level where one considers the costs to our society, the second in respect of individual organisations or undertakings. For the first, all the research is out there and no doubt you already have it or will find it. For the second, I would suggest that in researching for your paper, you should also consider this alternative. It cannot ever be, of itself, cost effective in an organisation. This is not to say that costs associated with safety should just be accepted. Rather that by trying to identify them separately, in order to justify H&S as cost effective, the myth that H&S is an add-on is perpetuated. Of course the cost of a business must be managed and H&S is always a factor of that. The issue is that most of the costs are integral rather than separate. This is where QM has been more successfull over the past 25 years or so. This is the important business path to follow. Get any H&S factors recognised and costed in decision making processes and management reviews. One quick example might be where cost benefit based risk analysis is used to direct decision making. There are often two significant practical difficulties in getting “buy in” to the theory of costing H&S amongst many management teams. First, there is a strong perception that it must be about an incident based approach since our other costs are seen as production costs, quality costs, HR costs with H&S components. Unfortunately a trip to the HSE website often confirms this perception for them. Second, the true costs of many H&S events are often not available for some time after the event. (including insurance premium costs) Thus we "devise" play figures to ensure that costs appear quickly and they just rebound in time. The problem is that the best managers like to be ahead of the game, not behind it. Based on the above, maybe the answer to your question as follows. "We can demonstrate clearly at a socio-economic level that it is cost effective to include H&S in our social controls but at individual levels? Only in well managed organisations who have understood and implemented best practice management in their business will H&S ever be cost effective." The views expressed should be taken as opinion to debate and not as representing any professional stance with regard to the premise of cost effective safety.

Posted By Anthony Slinger I seem to remember a thread (I think it was merv)where it was mentioned that two companies were studied. I think it went along the lines of one threw money at health and safety and the other spent nothing, except for fines and civil claims. At the end of the study they spent about the same(?) amount of money. On a cost effective basis (moral and legal issues not considered), in this case, there was no difference.