I don't think you are being controversial in this statement. I think it is the general consensus these days to not use legislation as a tool for beating people with.

Company rules, as you say, are local to the way the company runs (manages) their H&S. As long as they (employees) are made aware of the rules, then breaches of these would go through the same disciplinary process as say, lateness or absenteeism.

Its the sign of an inexperienced safety adviser, to rely on the legal point of view as a 1st option.

I don't tell my staff about legislation when I tell them about Health and Safety. However, if they want to know why, on an individual basis, then we discuss the legal point and why we do what we do. I ran eight Safe Manual Handling courses last week and the Manual Handling Regulations were referred to just once in one course where we looked at capabilities and I had to say that there was no legal upper limit in law.

They don't need to know, that's our job. They need to have programmes and guidelines that are easily understandable and easy to follow.

Graham

You are not being controversial. I agree with your points and those of responders so far. One of the unfortunate traits of some H&S professionals in the past is that they felt that their training courses and sometimes correspondence needed to quote H&S law in detail. For the vast majority of employees and line managers this practice was unnecessary and probably reinforced an adverse view that H&S was boring and furthermore expounded by pedantic bores. During most of my years with my immediate former employer, my H&S colleagues and I tried to counter this perception. For example, at the start of training courses, we usually said that much of the content of the courses was underpinned by legislation, i.e. national law enforced by inspectors from HSE as regards our employer's activities and workplaces. Furthermore, we told our trainees that they were not expected to know the legislation. However, if any of them were keen to find out more or discuss the legislation, they were always welcome to ask us at some other time. It seemed that few people ever took up our offers about this! What was more important, as Chris Packham mentioned at #3, was to generate discussion, e.g. by means of a "brainstorm" session with a flipchart (very low tech devices nowadays but still very useful at times) about the purposes and benefits of H&S legislation and company rules, etc.

As an analogy in support of the above-mentioned approach to H&S legislation, I've sometimes said that I'm aware that legislation exists (and why) to require i) the provision and maintenance of seat belts in vehicles and ii) drivers and passengers to use them. However, I cannot quote which particular bit/s of road traffic legislation are involved and, furthermore, don't need to know. However, if I ever feel an urge to know, I believe that the requisite information is readily available from reliable sources on the internet.

Graham B

p.s. It's somewhat worrying to discern from some postings on this forum that some people seem to think (wrongly) that detailed H&S legislation exists to cover every conceivable situation and activity which could occur in workplaces and work activities. One of the benefits for employers of employing or consulting competent H&S professionals is that they use their knowledge, experience, judgement and common sense, etc., to give pragmatic guidance and advice about matters for which legislation is either non-specific (e.g. most of the main sections of the Health and Safety at Work, Etc., Act 1974) or doesn't exist. (Most forum users will understand what I mean by the term 'common sense'. For those who wish to react by saying that it is far from common, please provide an alternative expression with the same gist! )

spot on!
It's a sure sign

unless it's RIDDOR :-)

John

Training sessions will have one slide on the legal side with some bullet points anything more than that and I bore myself.

Andy,

In training sessions you do have to touch on the law & regs.
Hilary expresses this better than me.
However when "out and about" I make challenges but would never cite regs

Something along the lines of "how do you plan to carry on playing golf after you have crushed your arm in that machine". An exaggeration but you get the picture.

Common scenario
me: "shouldn't you be wearing safety glasses doing that?"
Them: "Oh yeh! sorry I forgot"
Me: "No need to apologise, it's not me that's going to end up with one eye"

Then follows a conversation and a convert and hopefully a disciple.

Quite often that isn't the response that one gets, and getting a conversation can be difficult.

Depending on circumstances, if a supervisor or manager is genuinely interested, I will say something like 'This is what an inspector would pick up on if he was walking round here' and might mention what prosecutions can result from removing guards or not enforcing the wearing of PPE. It just depends on the management personality, and whether they are keen to be seen to be running a two single business.