Cookstown District Council
Environmental Health
Healthy Workplaces Campaign
HEALTHY WORKPLACES: GOOD FOR YOU, GOOD FOR BUSINESS
Healthy Workplaces is a two-year campaign which aims to promote a management approach to risk assessment.
The two-year campaign seeks to convey clearly that risk assessment is a step-by-step examination of all aspects of work undertaken.
Risk assessment need not necessarily be complicated, bureaucratic or a task only for experts.
Why Risk Assessment?
Every 3.5 minutes, somebody in the EU dies from work-related causes!
167,000deaths are caused each year as a result of either work-related accidents (7,500) or occupational diseases e.g. asbestosis (159,500).
Every 4.5 seconds, a worker in the EU is involved in an accident that forces him/her to stay at home for at least 3 working days ie more that 7 million accidents a year.
Source: European Agency for Safety and Health at Work.
These all come at huge costs:
Human costs
Business costs
Costs for society
A prevention approach based on risk assessment aims to put measures in place to prevent such accidents and diseases.
What is a risk assessment?
Risk assessment is the process of evaluating health and safety risks arising form hazards in the workplace.
A hazard is anything that may cause harm e.g. chemicals, electricity, machinery and equipment, an open drawer, aspects of work organisation, etc.
The risk is the chance or probability, high or low, that somebody could be harmed by these or other hazards.
A risk assessment is therefore a careful and systematic examination of all aspects of the work undertaken to consider what could cause injury or harm, whether the hazards could be eliminated and, if not, what preventive or protective measures are, or should be, in place to control the risks.
Employers’ duties
Employers in each workplace have a moral duty and a legal responsibility to ensure the safety and health of workers. A risk assessment enables effective measures to be put in place to protect the safety and health of workers.
These include:
Preventing occupational risks
Providing information and training to workers
Putting in place the organisation and means to implement the necessary measures.
A risk assessment will help employers and other people responsible to:
Identify the hazards in the workplace and those at risk Evaluate the risks associated with those hazards Determine what measures should be taken to protect the safety and health of employees and others Put in place the preventive and protective measures Monitor and review whether the measures in place are working
What is Cookstown District Council doing as part of the campaign?
The campaign will run throughout 2008 and 2009 and features two European Weeks of Safety and Health.
As part of the initiative, a number of survey visits are planned to be undertaken across a range of businesses over the next few months. It is then hoped to run a series of workshops to enable “Best Practice” information to be shared across the business sector to enable the appropriate controls to be put in place in 2009.
Employers will be offered information and assistance to fulfil their legal requirement to carry out risk assessments.
Who else can take part in the campaign?
The campaign is open to all organisations and individuals at local, national and European level, including:
Employers
Managers, supervisors and workers
Trades unions and safety representatives
Health and Safety professionals
Education providers
How can you get involved?
On the campaign website at http://hw.osha.europa.eu you will find a wide variety of campaign material in 22 EU languages e.g. fact sheets, good practice case studies, cartoon videos, links to related sites.
The Health and Safety Executive website www.hse.gov.uk/risk also has lots of information on practical steps to protect people from risks. Example risk assessments for various workplaces are also available to download at www.hse.gov.uk/risk/casestudies.
The EU – Occupational Safety and Health Agency (OSHA) has put in place a number of channels and actions to give visibility to those who get involved in the Healthy Workplaces campaign. There are two levels:
Participation: Everyone involved in the campaign can download a Certificate of Participation to print and display, along with an online flash banner for your website
Partnership: You can be recognised as an official partner of the Healthy Workplaces campaign and as an organisation dedicated to occupational safety and health at work. The partner status gives you a Partner Certificate, promotion through the official partner and events section on the campaign website, recognition in the campaign press releases and at the campaign events at European and national level.
You can register interest at:
http://osha.europa.eu/en/campaigns/hw2008/partners.
If you have any further questions or need more information please contact the Environmental Health department. Email envhealth@cookstown.gov.uk or telephone 028 86762205.