Hi folks, a bit of an odd thread but i felt this community may have enough with experience of this to input. We have received our RoSPA award as silver for 2015, following silver from the last 2 years and a gold previously to that. Obviously since we achieved gold the first time we did this everyone was happy, now we have silver 3 years on the trot, many are starting to get a bit miffed (Mainly at me) that we dont have gold. For this year i paid the extra £80! to get feedback on our award submission paperwork. Basically the main issue seems to be that I did not provide enough evidence of things such as communication on occupational health within and outside the company, however i gave examples of safety meetings, managament reviews, and explained our internal health promotion for healthcare etc. I cannot see how much more i can give to them to show we take occupational health seriously. Anpother example stating we dont\cannot show that we carry out health surveilance, when all staff have regular medical inspections carried out as part of their roles for travel, and evidence is given of certification and records of First aid and absence from work etc. The fact that you are limited to a cap of 8 examples per question, there is a limit to how much you can show them. I just feel that after putting in a lot of work for this award to bring us up to gold, i feel that they are asking for examples that i cant give. Our workplace doesnt carry out a lot of work that requires local health monitoring for example, i.e. no risks to breathing, no welding, minimum chemicals. We also dont have a high rate of work place illness, so giving examples of review and remediation of cases where someone has returned to work is nigh on impossible, but we are markjed down because we dont give 'worked examples' I now this sounds like a bit of a rant, but i just get annoyed that after getting gold (with pretty much the same questions asked every year, and with a LOT of evidence put into the submission, why it seems that we are now WORSE as a workplace. have they changed the scoring system? I just wondered if anyone else had a similar experience. Misery loves company :)

I do see areas where we can improve, but when you spend a couple of months putting every scrap off evidence you can in, then just get silver again, and then find in the £200! (not 80 as i thought) feedback 5 pieces of paper, with the minimum info on it, mixing good and bad responses all together! I find they want stuff that makes no sense in the question as they pose it. If i get silver again next year i worry i may get a bollocking from higher up, even though no one putrs any effort in when i ask for help.

The thing is, its not an audit per say, you answer questions in a box, and supply hotlinked document evidence, its all online.

Oh, no, we get audited over 2 days by a full accredited UKAS audit team for our management systems, and we get similar audits for our supplier status to clients, we always score very highly. This is a thing where you pay a sum of monies, you then get a question pack\file, you answer the questions (about 1200 words per section cap) and you attach evidence documents of your processes, records, minutes etc, then that is reviewed and you get a score from Merit, through Bronze, silver and Gold. I just didint feel their feedback was very good given it cost £200 and it basically said limited\NO evidence given of ###. Especially when i gave a fair few examples, and for things like procedures, you tend to only have one for a section, and for things like occy health, we dont have many occupational health issues, so cannot give evidence of such things happening. i.e. Not being able to give return to work interview minutes of a person being ill through work was bad, even though we havent had anyone off through work..... If you see what i mean.

Right, so it's just @%$£@*&, especially the £ bit I would tell your managers it's a waste of time and money/resources As I say the BSC 5 Star Award seems to be a fair assessment, my customer went from Bronze to Gold in four years (not ALL down to me of course :o) and there's no on-line aspect - but I'm not sure what it costs as the OHSAS is combined in the cost

Richard I agree with Rayrap in most points.. However Health and Safety business based on judgment ..regardless some people try to quantify that with score, yellow, red, green colors....Maybe in this year , they have better candidates which their evidences were more solid and suitable...or another person was checking your evidences which has different opinion from previous one! SHV

There has been a previous thread on this subject http://forum.iosh.co.uk/?g=posts&t=106470

I dont like the system much though as it makes it look like i am doing a poor job, when in fact i am improving our workplace systems year on year and get good reports from both accredited boy audits and client audits. I always feel you are only as good as your lowest score when your role is reviewed in the workplace :(

There isn't an awards dinner now, its seats in rows and a light buffet. I wonder how that affected attendance at the awards ceremony haha