Are any colleagues aware of organisations who have moved away from having a single health, safety and wellbeing champion on their board? Instead each director has become the champion for a different aspect of health, safety and wellbeing. Have any members tried this approach (or are aware of organisations that have) and if so what have been the risks and benefits?

Not exactly the same, but I started a thread a few months ago about not having a single director responsible for safety and was lambasted for suggesting such a thing - http://forum.iosh.co.uk/...spx?g=posts&t=117977 The basis for the criticism I came in for was mostly bogus - "An executive committee will always have an FD, or director accountable for finance", for example, and actually ours does not. In my company HR does not have a specific director, finance does not have a specific director, operations does not have a specific director, and so on. Our model is that the business operates with sector-specific divisions, and the director responsible for a division is responsible for all aspects of that division - that director knows (s)he's not simply responsible for getting the product out the door, they're responsible for the safety of the people who have to get the product out the door, and not only is the director responsible for safety, there's no-one else 'more' responsible for it. However, I think this is yet a different dividing of the responsibility to what you seem to be considering.

My concern with this is that some of my senior people are now no longer familiar with the way things are done (in a laboratory) and they come up with rather silly things. They walk around and think they have to come up with recommendations and so they find a sledge hammer to crack an insignificant nut. For example we had to put a corrosive sign on a 100ml bottle of a 1% solution of hydrochloric acid. We only employ graduates our cleaners are expressly told NOT to touch anything on a lab bench. If a graduate does not know hydrochloric acid is corrosive they shouldn’t be working in our premises, and frankly they should be dismissed in my view. So if senior people are on the ball with how things are done then it’s fine to give them a more hands on role. But my fear is we’ll get lots of silly little rules that just make people who are overzealous feel they’re doing a good job. I know I’m in a rather odd position in that I have to argue against some ideas such as insisting people hold the hand rail on the stairs, don’t carry cups of hot drinks about etc. This one really gets me going since it’s the guys who argue this who will carry a cup of coffee down the stairs during a fire drill. It’s the perceived need to make changes just for the sake of saying they’ve done something that concerns me. Not quite what the OP had in mind I know, but I needed a rant, thank you for your forbearance.

One of the benefits of our structure is that all the directors are closer to how their people actually work. All have in the past been practising in the area they now manage, and all but two or three still practice in that area (though some only to a small degree / keeping their hand in / dabbling / interfering, depending what spin you want to put on it). Most don't (ie can't) actually work the number-crunching software, and most manage to avoid the January night-shifts on site in the rain, but they do actually know how the work is actually done in their parts of the business. It's what I like best about our structure / ethos, I think, and I'm grateful for it.

I don't remeber undue critisim the the last post, most people were saying what went on in thier company.

Environment, health, safety, and quality all starts at the top with ALL board of directors buy in. Whether you have a head of EHS&Q on the board as my company or All board members, its starts at the top. There is no right or wrong answer but you do need a line up there.

No, I did not. Some people claimed I badly articulated the question - apparently when I said "It's not the company I'm discussing but [in company x] ..." many people didn't realise that the following comment did not relate to the company I was discussing. I still don't know how much more clearly I could have put it. What I badly articulated was the issue that it's not possible for every company to have a functional expert for every role, and indeed that designating one director as director responsible for safety does not make them a functional expert. Where is that recommendation? The joint IOD/HSE guidance for example says "some boards find it useful to name one of their number as the health and safety ‘champion’" and "The presence on the board of a health and safety director can be a strong signal that the issue is being taken seriously", but stops short of recommending it. Presumably there's a recommendation somewhere else, though?