Aftrnoon All,

I am struggling for ideas to try and engage senior managers in elemenets of h&s training.  We recently sent out a flash session (20 min group/individual  h&s session) to all staff (500 or so). It's important to bear in mind that out staff are spread all over the UK and a lot work remotely with limited direct one to one contact with their line amangers. However the problem is the senior managers. This flash session invovled picking one of 4 accidents that happeend to staff in the past 12 months and then using the 5 why's, to try and identify the immediate, underlying and root causes of the incident. The alarming thing was the poor response retun from senior managers and even more alarmning was the poor quality of the response, 1 or 2 lines at best. We made it mandatory for all staff to do but those that have done it have shown a real contempt for it. 

Does anyone have any suggestionas how I could better engage those senior managers. What has worked well for others in trying to promote h&s and get better involvement? 

Thanks in advance

Hi Clane,

Quite often when these things come out the reasons why we want people to complete the training or tasks is often lacking and if you simply get the 'because we told you to' you will struggle to get response or anything more than a half hearted attempted. I'm not saying that this is the approach that you have taken but quite often the ones that companies take.

Managers and Supervisors are busy people and if something has no benefit from what that can see they will tend not to do it or put it off. I'm a SHE Manager and part of the senior team and I will quite often struggle to do things when I can't see a benefit or because is taking up to much of my time, its a human trait that a lot of us have.

Things that might help. Think about what you want to gain from this, what will the people completing the task gain from it (a Positive benefit will encourage them more to complete it), the form or format; is it straight forward and easy to follow, is the form people are filling out tick boxes or long winded. Is there any way you can make it easier.

Can you give them an example showing good practice of what you want the responses to look like, was it clear in what they needed to do and was there the opportunity for support (dialling in etc).

It may sound like hand holding or micro managing and some will say they are Managers and it comes with the job, but if you can make it easier and beneficial for people they will most likely do what you want them to do.

Hope that helps

First they need to understand what it is you are trying to get them involved in. A 20 minute exercise in accident investigation by itself will teach them nothing. What the business needs to understand is that the most important thing in an organisation as far as H&S is concerned is the attitude and engagement of middle managers, who need to be out there leading by example. They need to understand their role and need to WANT to learn things like how to conduct accident investigations. Not an easy ask but you have to keep plugging away at them and to engage with them and not to alienate them.