Michael Lee, BWF Membership Director
We have 55 companies already committed to this campaign and want to get to 100 by the end of June – in fact ideally we would like all members signed up. If you are one of these companies, I would like to thank you and hope that this blog works as a refresher. This campaign is different from anything we have run before and nothing we can say here will be stronger than the introduction from Robin Baker, General Manager of Premdor. He is the inspiration that helped us to get this campaign off the ground and I encourage you to watch this very short video to hear why.
There is no fee attached to becoming a H&S Hero, all we ask is a commitment to changing the culture in our industry – woodworking is still one of the worst performing manufacturing sectors when it comes to accidents and this needs to change.
Compliance with Health and Safety law is also a commercial imperative with figures revealing that HSE has been receiving millions of pounds in revenue from manufacturing businesses through the controversial Fee For Intervention (FFI) scheme. The FFI visit programme is targeting ‘higher risk’ sectors such as woodworking, so BWF members are urged to ensure that they have all their Health & Safety precautions in place or they will risk paying out thousands of pounds through the £124 per hour HSE inspection and assistance fees.
Signing up to become a Health & Safety Hero isn’t hard, it is a simple 4 step commitment:
1. Sign the pledge to improve the safety culture in your business for the better
2. Adopt the topic of the month and present this to all relevant people in your company in a toolbox talk (or talks) – we will provide all supporting material
3. Send to us details of any near misses or accidents so that the learnings can be shared with all (all personal and company details will be redacted, we simply want as many people as possible to learn from mistakes and avoid future problems)
4. Promote your company internally and externally as a H&S Hero
As an optional 5th thing, we would like you to consider an individual or project for the BWF H&S Hero Award. We use these awards to champion this vital campaign and recognising a project or individual internally in your business also helps to demonstrate the importance you place on these matters.
We have put together some excellent resources to help your business tackle areas such as wood dust, machine training, noise, manual handling and more. In return for your commitment we will send you all the information needed to support this drive. It will be focussed around the topic of the month and will include toolbox talks, videos, safety cards, fact sheets and posters. We will contact you on a regular basis to audit your involvement and ensure you are getting the best from the campaign. We are also planning to host a number of events to support this campaign over the next 12 months and it would be great to get you involved.
This is about making our industry safer and developing a better culture for all, it is about all stepping up to be H&S Heroes. I hope that we can count on your support.
Please do take 7 mins out to watch the video and if you want more details on how to enter the award, just send me an e-mail and we will arrange an application form to be sent.
