An alarming trend of companies apparently ignoring health and safety in an attempt to save costs during the recession could result in logistics managers facing jail.
Leading training company Pivotal Performance is warning firms to keep health & safety a top priority, even when times are tough. Its in response to a recent survey by a legal firm National Accident Helpline, which found that 62 per cent of employees thought their boss was placing less emphasis on health and safety.
Pivotal Performance points to a new law which came in just five weeks ago, which could see managers and directors jailed if one of their employees is hurt at work. The Health and Safety Offences Act 2008 started on 16th January 2009, and makes logistics employers personally accountable for the safety of their employees. Breaches could see managers or directors jailed, or face Magistrates fines of up to 20,000. Willie Bell is the regional manager of Pivotal Performance in Glasgow. He said: If this survey is to be believed, then companies are putting their managers and directors at risk of jail for the sake of cost savings. Thats not a clever thing to do, even in a recession. The safety of staff must be the number one priority for all companies, no matter how badly they are doing. One accident is all it can take to wipe a business out.
Willie added: 34 million days are lost a year due to a work related injury or accident. Reducing the focus on health and safety is not a risk that any company can afford to take. Pivotal Performance is one of the UKs leading health and safety training companies with offices in Scotland and Northamptonshire. It has an individual way of training people called PPTplus, which teaches delegates how to win commitment from others, not just compliance.
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