Posted By Calum R Cameron
No mate, That is how some people see us.
Thankfully they are now becoming the minority and it is for us as professinals to try to raise the profile of safety and in particular health issues. Health issues are definitly the poor relation. I'm still pulling people down from open edges where a fall could prove fatal so the message that an operative could pick up a lung disease in twenty years is proving hard to get people to take seriuosly. That is the nature of what we do though isn't it.
Just keep plodding on like the rest of us and persevere. Paperwork is an unfortunate but necessary part of the job which we have to live with.
Let them take the p/+s if they want-we will hold our heads up and fight on.
ONWARDS AND UPWARDS MUST BE THE CRY.......

Posted By Kate Graham
Whenever people criticise "health and safety" I ask if they prefer disease and injury.

Posted By Peter MacDonald
Jim

To many it's about risk perception. People working in high risk situations (working at height, electrical, confined space etc) may perceive great value from safety management. Unfortunately many safety managers seem to beleive in some sort of risk free utopia where by all risks have to be managed out. If the risk mitigation is not in proportion to the perception then people can see it as a bureaucratic pedantic excersise. I beleive zero accidents at work to be unobtainable and most outside the profession would agree. You can work now for organisations that say they put your welfare above everything else, where dust in the eye, or a bump into a work station is considered a major failure in the safety system. All very well, but when they find they can do their manufacturing or whatever somewhere cheaper they up sticks and demobolise the workforce. (or whatever term they use now for make redundant) I would rather have the discomfort of a couple of minor injuries during my working life and actually have a working life. So hurrah for handrails, fall protection, permits to excavate but boo to accident reports for paper cuts, banning british bulldogs in school and 40 minute inductions to use the toaster in the office.

I can imagine the reaction to this but heh! we can't live life in a bubble. Have you considered the risk of driving at seventy miles an hour on a road separated from a 140 mph collision only by a painted stripe on the road. You do the risk assessment. You wouldn't have left your house this morning.

Peter

Posted By Neil Harvey
What annoys me is the lack of response from organisations like HSE, IOSH, BSC, RoSPA to this kind of attack on the profession.

The Daily Telegraph's Neil Collins has a regular dig at what he calls "health 'n' safety" - there was another go yesterday. The Daily Mail (I think) recently used the phrase "rampant HSE" in a critical article about the "nanny state".

Where is the counter-campaign by the professional bodies to all this - I don't recall seeing any. H&S professionals have a hard enough time as it is winning hearts and minds at work - a colleague of mine recently attended a meeting where the chair referred in all seriousness to health and safety political correctness - we need someone to be shouting just as loudly as the Jeremy Clarksons of this world to put our case over.

Posted By Sean Fraser
I agree with Ron - it is us, as individual professionals, who have to work and act in such a manner that people cannot "relate" to such an exaggerated steroetypical image. Problem is, we often read these newspaper articles ourselves and believe them, tut-tutting to ourselves bur secretely amused at the absurdity of it all!

The bureaucrat is an historically hated figure - nameless and faceless, an easy target for pillory and ridicule. Just look at the misinformation that has been so persistent with regard to the EC and how it has now entered the national conciousness to such an extent that people automatically believe everything they are told because the prejudice has become so in-bred. People fail to question the validity of what are, even superficially, outlandish and non-sensical stories (because they are just that) - remember the one about the Russian acrobats and hard-hats? Complete tosh. But the Commission attempts to counter such misinformation and out-and-out lies, but it has become somewhat of a losing battle.

I would be very concerned if our professional bodies and enforcement agency had failed so miserably in putting out the true message that they had to counter untrue ones in the same way - by then it will be too little, too late.

I previously posted a topic seeking views of the forum on how we see ourselves as a profession - although related to this issue, I was keen to see if we considered ourselves to be a profession that seeks to encourage and educate rather than control and dictate. I believe that it is what each of us does individually that will either dispense or reinforce the negative image that currently plagues us.

Moaning about it doesn't help - if anything, it only makes it worse if we perceive ourselves as victims and we are seen to be whinging. Doing what we do the best way we can, involving others and leading by example - that's what will make the difference!

Posted By Matthew Joseph O'Farrell
CALM DOWN! CALM DOWN!
Are we on the wrong track here? Where does health and safety sit with a decision to prohibit participation in organised school athletic pursuits on the grounds of gender?
Simple answer! NOWHERE.
You can bet this decision came from an ill informed Head Teacher who has been fed ‘misinformation’ and for fear of the possible redress from an equally misinformed, litigious, greed-driven parent or guardian, encouraged by an unscrupulous ‘no win, no fee’ purveyor of fortune. Could they really exist!
Don’t despair for any damage to our profession. The real damage is to the deprived young girls and the credibility of the teaching profession. As safety professionals we have no truck with such crass stupidity nor with the media who try to propagate the link to us.
Too often organisations treat health and safety as a burdensome chore and employ the cheapest possible resource to fulfil a legal duty, result, incompetence. Too often the media are sucked-in by the ‘silly’ tale. If this is the case here, as it must surely be; is it not a reflection on their own, rather than on our profession? I think so!