Workshop Outline

The aim is to help you assess how you manage the health risks within your company. This will enable you to prioritise any areas where you think improvement is needed. It is anticipated that the workshop will take no longer than two hours.

Why?

Deaths and cases of ill health from work related diseases far exceed those caused by accidents in the construction industry. The industry has made great strides in improving safety on sites but a lot more needs to be done to reduce the number of workers contracting work related ill health. For example, for every construction worker killed by an accident at work it is estimated that approximately 100 die from ill health linked to their work in the industry.

What Is Involved?

The toolkit provides a framework for discussing the health risks management arrangements that you have in place. It will focus on the following four key themes:

• Commitment
  Is there clear leadership and direction to address relevant health risks?
• Management
  Are there appropriate systems in place to manage these risks?
• Involvement
  How well do you communicate with employees on health risks? Are they fully engaged with how you want to manage these?
• Evaluation
  How well do you use health risk information / feedback to evaluate your current management arrangements and influence improvements where necessary?

Using the toolkit involves the following steps:

Step 1 – Preparation

Before the session it is important to consider your current arrangements for managing health risks in the context of the above themes and HSE guidance (http://www.hse.gov.uk/construction/healthrisks/index.htm).

Potential areas include existing:

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• • Policies and organisational arrangements (including those for subcontractors)

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• • Risk assessment / method statements for common high-risk tasks

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• Arrangements for health surveillance or occupational health provision.

There is no need to provide these documents at the session. Also consider who should be present at the meeting. You may want to discuss the above with them beforehand.

This could include:

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• • The appropriate Health and Safety lead

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• • An HR representative familiar with your contractual arrangements for occupational health provision or someone from the provider itself

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• Worker representation
• Owner/Director/Senior Manager

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Step 2 – Toolkit Discussion

During the session the above themes will be used to discuss the current approach you take to managing health risks.

Step 3 – Self Assessment and Action Planning

After the meeting you will be well placed to look at how the content of our discussions reflects what happens in practice in your organisation. The most effective way of doing this is for you to review how well your arrangements match what is required and check what happens in practice at site level. This will highlight areas of strong performance and enable you to prioritise any further action needed.

You will be provided with more information on this last step at the conclusion of the meeting.