Simple but effective
August 1st 2005

Recently Ian Clay, editor of HSM attended the launch of a new book published by IOSH Services Ltd. This book entitled ‘Protect your people - and your business’ by Bryan Toone is a refreshingly straight forward attempt to demystify health and safety and is aimed primarily at those in SME’s whose job role is not primarily health and safety. The book itself is groundbreaking in its simplicity and also because it represents the beginning of a new initiative as IOSH looks to spread its message beyond its membership.

The context In order to frame the context for the launch of Bryan Toone’s new book IOSH chief executive, Rob Strange spoke about a new five year plan for IOSH including four current themes: The competent health and safety practitioner. With IOSH having individual Chartered status as from November 2005, IOSH will be accrediting Safety and Health Practitioners (SHP’s) at two levels of competence – professional and technician level. Also IOSH will be working closely with the HSE in an effort to define ‘what competence means’ and hopes in time to get a statement from the HSE as to what actually constitutes a competent practitioner.

Corporate manslaughter and the duty of directors. The draft corporate manslaughter Bill is before parliament, IOSH supports this Bill and wants it to be further reaching. As Rob said during his talk “We [IOSH] believe it should cover all places of work”. IOSH believes that company directors should be encouraged to manage risk proactively and directors’ health and safety duties should be confirmed by the HSE reissuing them as an Approved Code of Practice.

The health agenda. Protecting the health of workers requires the same challenges as preventing accidents, it requires leadership, commitment, worker involvement and effective programmes.

Raising the tone of debate on health and safety. Rob said that he wants to get rid of the image of health and safety as something of a killjoy discipline. “Conkers bonkers media stories” he said “are just urban myths and not real stories, the result of a journalistic silly season that now seems to go on all year round”. The HSE strongly advocate sensible risk assessment appropriate to the industry and the level of risk involved. This is a fine balance and Rob believes too many local authorities etc are looking to protect themselves and blaming everything on ‘health and safety’. One of the first initiatives in order to address and reinforce the message of ‘sensible health and safety’ is IOSH’s publication of Bryan Toone’s book.

The book, described by Rob Strange as “A unique ‘How To’ guide to tackling health and safety issues, in a jargon free way, for all businesses” is a distillation of Bryan Toone’s twenty five years of health and safety experience. Bryan, health and safety director of Ardmore Construction is a member of the IOSH Council, former chairman of the IOSH Construction Specialist Group and is a fellow of IOSH. He points out that the book “As well as distilling my experience also distills 100 HSE and other publications into 300 pages.” The book took Bryan three years to write and the initial intention was to write a ‘revision guide’ type publication of about 150 pages. Despite the finished book being twice that length it still has the simplistic approach of a revision guide and is not a daunting or impenetrable read.

Aimed primarily at SME’s, part of Bryan’s objective was to “bring health and safety to a wider audience”. This has been achieved with the wide ranging subject matter of the book.

Unlike other safety guides ‘Protect your people - and your business’ includes information on fire and hygiene (usually the remit of the food standards agency). It also covers management, premises, health, construction, workshops and factories, hotels and catering, events, grounds maintenance, offices, shops and warehouses.

As well as breaking down health and safety into manageable sections the book also includes clear and succinct checklists, that can be downloaded from the internet and is packed with useful training tips and hard facts. It is easy to navigate your way around the book as icons highlight fundamental points and demystify jargon. Legal requirements are also explained clearly and concisely.

Risk thinking All of the information in the book Bryan collects under the heading of ‘Risk thinking’. He wants the book to be used not only by those who have undergone health and safety training as a back up to their knowledge but also to promote thoughts amongst those who haven’t as yet any training. The book itself is all it claims to be ...a practical one stop health and safety toolkit.

More articles from IOSH: