This month we are focusing on Health and Safety roles and whether organisations can really afford to compromise on reducing their Health and Safety staff in order to cut costs.
Over the last three months around 1,250 professional health and safety experts have been made redundant and are now actively looking for work. Has the Health and Safety profession become oversubscribed in recent years, or are companies short-sightedly sacrificing the welfare of their workforce to provide a short term solution to financial woes and the credit crunch?
The latter seems to be the case, at least in the construction industry, as one in five construction sites failed health and safety checks during the latest national inspection initiative carried out by the Health & Safety Executive (HSE), figures released earlier this month reveal. Enforcement notices were served to immediately stop the work or activity on site or to require improvements to be made within a specified timescale in the majority of the cases BUT in 11 cases, inspectors believed the situation on site to be so poor that prosecution is being considered.
Another recent article informed us that around 8 per cent of UK businesses have slashed their safety budgets amid the recession, according to a new study by the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health. About 75 per cent of business leaders denied making any reductions to their health and safety budget but worryingly a further 17 per cent were unsure if any cuts had been made.
Our Health and Safety Recruitment Specialists Helen Gotts and Michael Simon would love to hear your views on this subject. Are you a Health and Safety expert looking for work or currently in employment and understand this area could be at risk?
Is reducing safety resources perceived as an effective and efficient cost saving, or is this potentially opening companies up to more serious issues in the long term?
229 workers were killed at work in 2007/08 according to the British Safety Council.
