An issue of Health and Safety

According to a recent survey by those friendly folk at Consult GEE, a specialist human resources website, the monotonous drones of Britain’s working class, along with our inadequate salaries, overwhelming, continuously suffocating debt, and constant uphill struggle against ballooning house prices, turns out we are not as Health and Safety (H&S) conscious as we should be just to top it off. Gone are the days when the phrase ‘at least you’ve got your health’ was thrown around the office willy-nilly to combat a bad day. We’ve lost that battle too apparently.

Stress poses the most dangerous risk chomping a massive 45.2% of the H&S pie graph, closely followed by the hilariously funny (but nonetheless just as serious) office slapstick of tripping and falling at 22.8%, back injury took third place with a hearty effort of 15.8% while repetitive strain injury and bullying notched 14.5 % and 1.8%, respectively.

The survey questioned 250 businesses in the past 12 months and found that our employers aren’t interested in hearing our woes either. According to Martin Pearce, a H&S expert at Consult GEE, more than half of employers believe H&S should be the responsibility of the employee, as the rising cost of complying with H&S laws reaches staggering heights. 

“Businesses are fed up with the amount of health and safety red tape being piled on them. The increasing amount of rules and regulation is clearly a burden for them.”

Perhaps this prompted the recent GAAPweb H&S video viewing earlier last week. Much to the amusement of the office, who giggled, chatted and scoffed at the mandatory viewing, reminiscent of a high school classroom. Arousing collective disdain and mockery from the classroom was the notion that the best way to tackle back pain was to remain working and active, in stark contrast to the common misconception of playing dead herring in bed for a week until the pain had subsided.

‘HA! Yeah, just another ploy to keep us working through the pain barrier, work us to the bone till we can’t no more,’ was the general consensus.

Turns out they were right. Applying my highly advanced research techniques (Google- where would we be without you?), I found a startling number of websites, including the health section of the BBC, medical organisations, physiotherapists, claiming lying in bed was not the answer but keeping muscles moving to actively combat the problem and strengthen ‘core zones’ would eliminate back pain for good.

And then it struck me, maybe, after all, we really aren’t as clued up on our H&S as we should be…

Comments

[Jack]

Health and Safety at work has definitely gone mad. My company just spent thousands of pounds buying and fitting those infernal speed ramps for the roads around our site... and now have one of my colleagues tasked with trying to find a supplier of "danger: speedbump" signs!?!

[Alex]

Thanks for the comment and handy link Saftey Consultant enigma. You must be in a constant self-internal battle against your conscience and your work duties. How do you cope with the added stress, its got to be a definite H&S no-no!

[A Safety Consultant]

It's true that many businesses are buried under the amount of health and safety red tape that they have to deal with. But I'm not going to complain too loudly because my wages are paid from trying to help them. Anyway, to avoid the back pain in the first place read this:
http://www.mb-hs.com/manual-handling.htm