Dear All,

I have recently started working for a large international organisation in a more senior position having worked my way up the ranks throughout my career. I have carried out a gap analysis highlighting some serious non-compliances with UK H&S legislation which has been highlighted to the board of directors, who are very unaware of their legal duties.

To change the balance of being reactive I need to put together a strong business case (something I have not had to do until now) to recruit more H&S persons, which I know is going to be a hard sell. Whilst I can use corporate manslaughter, sentencing guidelines and even the old Financial, legal, Economic and Moral obligations. I wondered if anyone has any advice or tips in preparing a good business case. As with most business's I have been asked how much the organisation would save. 

The key question asked is around savings. There is a way to make a strong case around this. We all know about "the cost of accidents", very few can do the accountants trick of first coming up with the baseline cost of an accident but then taking the argument on to give a calculation that shows how much turnover / cashflow is required to recoup the cost of an accident. Those who run their own business will recognise "profit and cost" is only one componant of a successful business, you also need "cashflow" and if that is poor or zero then you will be heading into recievership no matter what your profit margins are. My advice, do the extra work to show how much cashflow and turnover is required over and above the base cost of an accident or intervention and use that to demonstrate that by reducing costs a robust H&S focus can drive profits up, or reduce your exposure to a cashflow problem which would affect investment / pay / business development

jim

When the board was presented with your serious non-compliance issues what was their response - did they ask you to derive a plan and time frame for resolution, ask you to raise your army, or say nothing?

If your plan relies solely upon hiring bodies which was not part of the remit issued by the board you will be wasting your time.

If they said nothing I would be polishing my CV

Edited by user 06 July 2018 12:15:07(UTC)  | Reason: FFS

The problem is that simply having more H&S people will not make an organisation safer.  It down to the H&S culture of the whole organisation   and if everybody actually believes in it. If you have the right culture you could probably get away with one H&S professional who could also do other stuff like training and quality. If you have lots of people with H&S in their job title the assumption is that they a responsible for it and everybody else can focus on their “proper” jobs.

You also have to look at the sort of H&S people that you need. Just generic H&S people (are there such things?) might not really help you. For real added value you might need to identified H&S qualified specialists, in engineering, psychology or other technical things(never heard of a H&S qualified accountant though!)