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Health & Safety At Work: We Challenge You

11 September 2012

We all know it’s important, but how much attention do you pay to it on a daily basis? Health & safety is relevant to everyone. As an employer, you have a duty of care to your staff; as an employee, you need to be aware of the policies and procedures in place that are designed to help keep you safe. And this is never truer than when it comes to driving for work. But how much time and effort have you dedicated to this area recently?

Next month sees the launch of the 2012 European Health and Safety Week by the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work, which takes place from 22nd to 28th October 2012. This year’s theme is ‘Working Together for Risk Prevention’ – a theme that’s particularly pertinent to fleet management. There are a plethora of laws and guidelines in place that cover driving for work, and in response businesses need a multitude of policies and processes. From experience, though, we know that not everyone is on top of these.

It goes deeper than just ticking boxes. These processes and policies are designed to keep people safe. If you’re not overly concerned about your own safety, though, then perhaps some of the other consequences of not following these will concern you instead. For example, are you prepared for the scenarios below?

Scenario 1: You’re an employer with 100 staff members driving company cars on behalf of your business. You have a health & safety policy which tells you that if one of your staff is diagnosed with Diabetes you must control their driving activities, but you don’t have any system in place to identify these types of health issues and alert your HR or management team. A key employee, who drives tens of thousands of miles per year, has a hypoglycaemic event whilst driving on business, and you need to manage the impact of this…

Scenario 2: You’re an employee who drives for business on a regular basis, but you haven’t been fully briefed on the escalation process if you’re caught breaching one of the driving for work policies. You don’t realise that if you use your mobile phone illegally while driving this could lead to immediate dismissal. You get caught one day and are in for a nasty surprise…

If you’re already preventing these scenarios – and others like it – then we salute you. But if you think there’s room for improvement within your company, whether you’re an employer or employee, then we issue you with a challenge: get up to speed in time for European Health and Safety Week and help make your work a safer place to be.

If you need a hand fulfilling the challenge, Marshall Leasing’s Fleet Control system can help. Contact us on info@marshall-leasing.co.uk.

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