Editorial blog – Competence conundrum

Health and safety is full of ‘grey areas’. These exist to help businesses and managers retain freedom of choice on how they interpret the demands of law.

Approved codes of practice help remove some of the greyness, but still people choose to focus on and argue about the interpretation of words instead of focusing on the reason for the legislation being there in the first place. The same debate is now taking place over the word ‘competence’.

Recently, while training, I asked whether the term competence meant “all-knowing”, and exactly what was an agreed level? The HSE consults with industry professionals about changes to legislation, but that did not convince my audience that competence is defined by our industry’s own experience and perception of best practice.

When you employ someone, you look at their CV, where you would expect to find a mix of training and certification. For specialist jobs you might appoint an agency, and you want an agency where the staff constantly update their knowledge. The same is true of a project team – you need the best to be the best.

What’s clear from the IOSH Salary and Attitudes Survey is that increasing numbers of OSH professionals have growing remits, often including fire safety, occupational health, environment, facilities management and others. It would be unusual to find someone completely competent in all of these areas.

This is why IOSH puts such emphasis on continuous professional development (CPD), because learning and personal advancement help us keep people free from harm and do our jobs better.

We are moving towards regulation of our profession – something the HSE, other regulators, and members of government now welcome. According to the survey, 81 per cent of employed OSH professionals and 79 per cent of consultants say they, too, support accreditation.

The support is there, so it’s now up to all of us to reach a level of competence and ensure we maintain it. Only by recognising true competence and working with those who value it will we see change for the better.

Nattasha Freeman
IOSH president

Guest blog – Milan Hilton

mhl Support training manager, Milan Hilton, is our latest guest blogger. Milan travels up and down the country providing safety training, and intends to use this blog to share some of his more unusual experiences.

MILAN: on Dealing with a Pain in the Class and the importance of shutting stable doors before…

By way of introduction, let’s get my name out of the way shall we? No, it’s not made up and no, I’m not related to Paris, thank God. Anyhow, what’s in a name? ‘That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet’, as The Bard said.

But he never had to make a hotel reservation. You try calling the Manchester Hilton and telling them you’re Milan Hilton. Complete confusion always ensues, and I don’t even get staff discount. As a professional, managing the training function at mhl Support, delivering courses and conducting 1-2-1 sessions all over the country, I get to see a lot of hotel rooms. And raise a lot of receptionists’ eyebrows.

My name has had its repercussions at work, too. Delivering a course in Manchester, I had a group of eighteen people – the usual mix of earnest enthusiasts and bored-rigid (until I weave my magic, obviously ☺) delegates, (who were attending on sufferance). One fellow in particular was shaping up to be a first-rate pain in the class.

The course was Health and Safety for Managers and Mr. Pain was not impressed. He huffed and puffed and rolled his eyes alarmingly. At one point, his irritation boiled over. He said haughtily: ‘I’m not sure if I should be here at all. You see, I have a background in manufacturing.’ The implication was, ‘and you obviously don’t, so what can you tell me that I don’t already know?’

I recognised this as a symptom of the curse of my name. He’d obviously concluded that, with a moniker like mine, the closest I’d ever been to an industrial process was when the silver spoon was surgically removed from my mouth. (Leaving in its place a lovely Black Country accent. My name and Lenny Henry’s voice… See what I’m up against?)

I digress. So I resolved to collar Mr. Pain in the coffee break. He was bigger than me. ‘So what can you teach me?’ I asked, trying to make myself look and sound like Dirty Harry’s brother from Wolverhampton: (‘do yow feeyul luckay, punk?’) He said nothing. Calmly, I continued. ‘I was in manufacturing for 28 years’, I told him. ‘I was 21 years with Chubb in Wolverhampton and I ended up being one in four people in charge of all the production on site. I’ve personally done almost every job you can think of in manufacturing. Welding’, I said, by way of example. ‘Have you done any welding?’
‘Er, no…’
‘Ah’, said I, thoughtfully. ‘And I used to run the paint shop. A million pounds worth of automated electropheretic state-of-the-art production line for optimum degreasing and painting…’
‘Oh’, he said, examining his shoes. Mission accomplished.

Anyone who knows me will tell you that I’m not a big head by nature. So, much as I was tempted to give him both barrels, at that juncture, I backed off. Every now and then it’s important to establish your credentials with your audience, and this had been one of those occasions. When it happens, it’s important to make your point without attracting the attention of other members of the group – that would never do – but it was paramount that Mr. Pain knew I’d been there, seen it, done it and grown out of the T-shirt, and that I had something to say that could help him to do his job better.

He’d picked on the wrong guy, from the wrong firm! All of us at mhl have at least one thing in common, besides hands-on experience in our fields of expertise: passion. (I hate the word, but can you think of a better one?) We’re the kind of people that never tire of learning, of looking for ways to do things better. On the journey, like many trainers, I’ve amassed plenty of letters after my name and in the past six years I’ve been awarded ample certificates to paper my office.  I’m not in the Training business for plaudits, though, nice as it is to receive them. I’m in it because I believe in training. Often, sadly, a customer engages me after some incident or other has exposed a skills gap. Bluntly, in too many cases, somebody has to get hurt before I get called in. That’s depressing.

And that’s the key message of this, my inaugural blog: lock the stable door before the horse bolts. It hurts less.

It’s 8.40 now, and I’m twenty minutes away from delivering the IOSH ‘Managing Safely’ course here at mhl Head Office in Newcastle, Staffordshire. Hopefully, there’ll be no Mr. (or Mrs.) Pain to deal with. If there is, I’m ready: ‘go ahead, make my day…’ In the nicest possible way, of course!

Thanks for reading my first attempt at a blog. I’ll be posting at regular intervals and plan to share some of my more unusual experiences. I’d love to get your feedback, so until next time, keep smiling!

Milan Hilton
milan.hilton@mhlsupport.com
www.mhlsupport.com

Editorial Blog – The fight goes on

It’s not going to be easy, you know. Implementing the HSE’s new strategy for it, I mean. I have to admit that it’s really rather clever to devise a plan of work in which others have the lion’s share of the effort – particularly in terms of tasks and issues that have hitherto proved the most difficult, tedious, and frustrating to address. But to be fair, it is now accepted by more or less all stakeholders that the Executive simply never will have sufficient resources to regulate every workplace, enforce every breach of the law, and protect every person by itself. We all, as Judith Hackitt has said, have a part to play.

But just who are ‘we’? Has this new strategy – and all the planning, and consultation, and roadshows, and face-to-face discussions that went into it – really convinced a whole new division of contributors to buy in to the health and safety ideal, or is it just the same, old-faithful cast – organisations and stakeholders signing up to ‘be a part of the solution’ who, let’s face it, always have been and always will be part of it?

While it was good to see the likes of the TUC, the Local Government Association, IOSH, the EEF, and many others formalise their commitment to the laudable aims of the strategy, it was impossible to  ignore the sense of déjà-vu and ghosts of strategies past (Revitalising, Securing Health Together, 2010 and beyond, anyone?)

However, my outlook changed a few weeks after the launch of the strategy when the provisional fatal injury figures for 2008/09 were released, showing that the number of people killed at work in Britain dropped to a record low. While this is by no means ‘job done’, it is an extremely positive and encouraging indication that the HSE and other stakeholders committed to improving health and safety in this country are on the right track.

As our July issue front cover star, Napoléon Bonaparte, once said, “victory belongs to the most persevering” and none has been as tenacious as the UK health and safety profession. Keep the good work up to keep the statistics going down.

Tina Weadick
SHP Editor

Guest Blog – Katherine Wilson

Introducing a Practitioner Blogspot – NUMed

Who am I?

I’m the Deputy Head of Safety at Newcastle University.  I work in the Newcastle University Safety Office with a small team of safety professionals and specialist Fire Safety , Biological, and Radiation advisors.

What is NUMed?

Newcastle University Medicine Malaysia or NUMed is going to be brand new international branch campus of Newcastle University. The thinking behind this is to deliver and award Newcastle University degrees in medicine and biomedical science to international students at the point of demand. The University plan is for the new campus to be ready to teach medical students at the start of the 2011/2102 academic year.

Why a blog?

The idea is to have an electronic diary update about the project on the SHP website to share our experience of setting up a campus abroad. The updates will become more regular as the project gets underway.

Whilst most of us have never had to think about the issues of working abroad, we hope that colleagues will identify with a project that is new and exciting in terms of health and safety. I’m sure that most safety practitioners will say that everyday is different.  It’s just that this is very different for us.

When the announcement was made that NUMed was going ahead this led to a flood of questions we need to address:

•    What are the timescales going to be?
•    Where is it going to be built?
•    What does Malaysian health and safety law say?
•    How are we going to apply our safety management system in Malaysia?

All these questions will be answered in various blog updates.

The Team here are used to advising on all sorts of safety issues relating to medical teaching and research as the University has a Medical Faculty in Newcastle. We also routinely work with the multi site issues and staff and students travelling abroad. This gives us as solid starting point.

We’re really at the very start of the project and there isn’t anything substantial in place yet so we have a fresh canvas to work from.

So what’s the safety plan so far?

The Director of Safety and Safety Office staff have been to a seminar with the University solicitors and the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) on international work and we’re now in the process of gathering background information. At University level, various project groups are being set up which safety will feed into.

The University is having an external health and safety audit at the end of April 2009. This is the HASMAP standard which is the norm for the Higher Education sector.

One of the objectives given to the auditor is to investigate whether the University safety management system covers all University activities now and in the foreseeable future including business abroad and to make recommendations and advise on corrective actions.

What to expect next?

Look out for a blog update for news on progress with the project.

Katherine Wilson
BA(Hons)CMIOSH MISTR

Welcome to the SHP blog

This is the official blog of the Safety & Health Practitioner (SHP) magazine, which is published monthly and received by all members (around 35,000) of the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health (IOSH), the UK’s largest organisation for individual health and safety professionals (IOSH is not responsible for any content on this blog).

We will be regularly updating this site with guest blogs. If you are interested in contributing, or have any suggestions please email shpeditor@ubm.com