Open Government Status

Fully Open

Author Unit

Policy group – Business Involvement Unit

Target audience

FOD Inspectors

Aim

To engage at board level to ensure that directors and board members understand the need for their active involvement in and leadership of health and safety, and that they adopt appropriate behaviours to achieve effective leadership in their organisations.

Justification

Directors’ leadership can achieve major improvements in the health and safety performance of their organisations.  HSE is committed to promoting greater director and board member leadership; encouraging strong leadership is one of the goals of the new health and safety strategy for Great Britain.

Audience/industry

Engagement should take place with directors and board members in all sectors (and with their equivalents such as governors, trustees - all those with a strategic role in their organisation). All sizes of organisation are to be included but priority should be given to those where day-to-day oversight of health and safety matters has been delegated to below director/board level.

Key messages

• your (directors’ etc.) leadership is crucial to your organisation’s health and safety performance;
• an effective health and safety performance, managing risk sensibly, brings 'bottom line' business benefits;  
• you should follow the good advice in the IoD/HSE Guidance, Leading health and safety at work.

Activities required

‘Leadership’ is a fundamental aspect of health and safety performance and thus could be a relevant consideration in any engagement with duty-holders.  For example, using the IoD/HSE guidance as a tool/benchmark:

• in planned inspection, examining with directors etc. how effective they are at leading health and safety;
• in reactive inspection, examining the contribution of directors etc. to failures which led to incidents, circumstances giving rise to justified complaint etc.

Although there are no explicit legal duties placed on directors etc under health and safety law, individual directors etc. are liable to prosecution, e.g. via S.37 of HSW Act in relation to their responsibility for offences committed by their organisations. The importance of effective leadership will be reinforced by:

• seeking the opportunity to take enforcement action against directors etc. in appropriate circumstances - advice is given in OC 130/8.

Timing

All year.

Diversity

Inspectors should be aware of whom (in terms of diversity e.g. men, women, disabled etc) is the target group in the sector they are dealing with.  Give consideration to, and factor into the approach, any issues that may surround this audience such as literacy issues, English as a second language and disability (access needs).

The Diversity pages give more information on these areas.

For information

The IoD/HSE guidance for directors (INDG417 or INDG417W/E for a dual Welsh/English version) and related resources (including case studies, PowerPoint presentation, checklist) can be found at Leading health and safety at work.

OC 130/8 - Prosecuting Individuals

Management Assessment Tool for SMEs - Questions on roles and responsibilities