Implications of the changes

The themes discussed thus far have focussed more on either developing issues or immediate outcomes. However, of particular interest were the longer term implications of the changing landscape. Thus, this theme differs from the earlier discussion of outcomes of changes in that it considered stakeholders’ predications for the long term future. Five themes emerged: uncertainty of the future; the changing role of stakeholders; in particular, practitioners; the effect on organisations,

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particularly SMEs; and, finally, standards of OSH.

5.4.1 Uncertainty of the future

When focussing on the implications of the changing landscape, an almost universal reaction was the difficulty of forecasting how the changes would affect the complex and dynamic system that is OSH. As an employer association interviewee put it: “I think it’s very difficult at this stage. We’re too close up

at the moment to actually understand how the reforms that were put in place as a result of Lord Young’s review or the recommendations that were contained in the Löfstedt report, I think it’s far too early to say what the impact of those will be”. Despite this hesitation to suggest what might be the

future for OSH, four subsequent themes emerged with tentative suggestions, as well as theoretical predictions.

5.4.2 The changing role of stakeholders

This subtheme discussed how the changes in the OSH landscape might alter the role of certain stakeholders. The HSE’s role was discussed extensively; there was a belief that resources would affect provision of advice. This impact on the HSE had stimulated discussions in other stakeholders’ organisations. Indeed a representative of a standardisation and certification body mentioned this decline in advice had prompted discussions about whether they could address this gap: “if the HSE

are going to have reduced resources and also there’s lot of stuff that needs to be guidance written or done, [we] could have a very significant role and I’ve pointed this out in [our] strategic policy”. Other

stakeholders also noted their roles could change as a result of a changing HSE. For example, one consultant mentioned that consultancy services may be required more now that advice from the HSE was being cut back: “Certainly [if there is] lack of clarity because it’s not there in the ACoPs, then

people will want to know from consultants what they should do. They will use it as an insurance policy”. Some stakeholders mentioned that they had already noticed a change in their role: “we are being approached more and more for advice, in terms of occupational safety and health […] because of the decline of the health line that HSE used to supply” (trade association interviewee).

However, it is important to note that not all of the functions of the HSE are transferable to other stakeholders. As noted by an insurance interviewee, stakeholders do not have the same powers as the HSE and, therefore, can do no more than provide advice: “we have been asked many times over

the years, just by governments of different political persuasions, whether insurers should become more involved in health and safety. But it’s a difficult issue for us because we are not policemen, we haven’t got the powers that the HSE and other regulators have. Our power is more commercial and economic […] but we certainly see that, probably in the future, it may be a role for insurers and other bodies to be providing advice to people to fill any gaps where the regulators pull out”.

Somewhat separate from the impact of the HSE’s role, trade unions were also concerned about the implications of changing labour dynamics on trade union membership. One union representative noted that the recent period had made it even more challenging for union representatives to fulfil their responsibilities: “the current climate is one that is making it difficult for us to ensure our reps are as

active as we would like them. But I think that’s just austerity, you know, being released from your day job to fulfil what is a voluntary role; it’s a very harsh climate. I think also a constraint is the capacity to recruit more health and safety reps so if you think at the moment because of redundancies which are happening in public and private organisations, we are losing members, where amongst those members we are losing reps. I think we’re going to have difficulty maintaining our numbers of OSH reps. So that’s a big challenge for us”.

There was specific concern for LAs as they had been subject to severe cuts and the reforms had not been yet finalised. One representative of government authorities noted: “the worst scenario is that

regulation goes central and it’s not a LA matter, but I’m not sure it will go that far, […] but I can see less work being done by LAs […]. There will be a lot less people and a lot less OSH will be done”.

5.4.3 The changing role of practitioners

Practitioners have a central role to play in the field of OSH, especially as there have been questions over whether practitioners contribute to some of the issues the reforms are attempting to address.

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Thus, it was unsurprising for interviewees to discuss the impact of the changes on practitioners. There did seem to be consensus around the fact that the issue of consultants had required addressing. For example, one consultant noted that the opinions of colleagues at workshops left a lot to be desired: “when we did a ‘round the table’ thing, the views of some of the people who were there

as independent consultants were shocking”. Another stakeholder from a standardisation and

certification body mentioned that the older generation of consultants had failed to make the switch to modern risk based approaches: “you will find there is a block of people who have been in this game

for many years and they would not recognise the OHSAS approach or this approach [based on risk assessment] as the way they would want to do things. These people are very risk averse or hazard focused”. An academic also shared this perspective: “there are 40,000 people allegedly in the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health, of which I am a Fellow. And I suspect most of them don’t understand what reasonable practicability means, and yet they’re supposed to be the professionals”.

One of the key concepts was the Occupational Safety and Health Consultants Register (OSHCR), the aim of which as perceived by stakeholders was to address some of the aforementioned issue through providing businesses with a recognised assurance of quality. However, a number of stakeholders were concerned that the OSHCR might not be an adequate solution to these issues, questioning its ability to adequately filter out some of the consultants that were providing poor advice: “there is a

huge challenge […] here of course. You want to be inclusive but you need to have a degree of rigour and I think that’s the bit that’s tricky. […] It’s a good start but it needs some fine tuning” (professional

association interviewee).

Furthermore, there were concerns over the practitioners who weren’t on the register who would still be practicing. As one representative from an employers’ association argued: “it’s just a very small fraction

of the number of people who are either directly or indirectly [involved with] health and safety. So I think there’s 2,000 consultants on the register but in terms of health and safety… there must be easily 100,000 people out there who’ve got health and safety as a substantial part of their job, and there is a question over whether they should be regulated”.

Apart from OSHCR, many comments were made about the need for practitioners to develop broader perspectives. One representative from a professional association commented on the soft skills required: “leadership skills and communication skills. If you’re going to get the senior management

within an organisation to manage risk as they should be doing, they may well need somebody to lead them, actually point them in the right direction, and influence them”. The same stakeholder also

discussed the ability to produce a business case for OSH: “What a lot of OSH practitioners don’t

actually understand is the business context in which they are expected to work. And we need to think of new ways of actually getting the message over. […] money is the language that senior management talk in, and we need to be able to talk their language”.

Indeed one representative from government agencies noted that the law should be used sparingly in the context of organisations. Discussing the feedback received at a performance appraisal the interviewee stated: “feedback I got from that […] was that I reached for legislation far too early in the

discussion and I hadn’t used the cost-benefit analysis angle, the moral angle. And I’d gone far too quickly for the legal angle”.

Another element of competence was the need for awareness around civil law, because as one insurer noted, insurers are interested in more than just regulatory issues: “we would probably have criticism of

some external bodies who just go out and are only ever looking at regulatory issues. Because we think that’s only half the issues, because they’ve probably got little or no competence in terms of understanding the civil law side of things and to some extent we think they’re doing a disservice, because we’ve had, and this has been a fairly regular issue raised with us, we might take on a risk, we might go and survey it, and we might then get a remark sometimes, ‘well you’ve picked up something that the HSE have never picked or we had a consultant in here and he never picked it up’. And you say no that’s because they are purely regulatory issues; what we are talking about is beyond that, it’s risk based issues”.

It seemed many stakeholders demanded more of practitioners, however, one trade association representative expressed concern that broadening the scope too much could result in a dilution of

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expertise as OSH practitioners would struggle to comprehend the broad nature of the job: “Some of

negatives that I think are happening because of the economic climate is more and more of these guys are getting lumbered with more and more of these jobs. You know, not only now are they the safety expert, they also have to become the environmental protection manager, and the facilities manager, and the whole range of other things. And if we’re not careful, I think that’s just going to dumb the whole field down a bit”.

5.4.4 Impact on organisations, including SMEs

As noted above, one of the main objectives of these changes is perceived to be the alleviation of burdens on businesses. As such, implications for organisations, particularly SMEs, were a key talking point of stakeholders. One notable concern was the perception of culture around OSH and the implications that would have for organisations. One trade union interviewee noted: “In the long term I

can’t see what the benefit is to any employer in creating a culture where health and safety isn’t taken seriously”. This culture was deemed as particularly damaging to SMEs; for example, a government

agency representative speaking of the changes stated: “If it makes things simpler and easier for

people to follow, one would hope they would do so. But experience tells me that sort of small firms have so many other competing demands that unless something is done to keep health and safety in their sight, then it just gets pushed to one side and forgotten about until something happens”.

Further commenting on the lack of drivers for engagement, one employer representative, noting that there is a difference between SMEs, argued that the larger organisations within the group might have other drivers for compliance, but the micro organisations would seem to suffer the most: “SMEs

covers such a wide range. I think I’d split it between the micro ones, and my concern would be the micro level that people just think health and safety is not an issue that I have to concern myself with, that would be my concern. For the bigger SMEs, when you’re getting into the 20 employees and above, my concern is a little less there because I think other factors begin to come into play […], they have to probably make sure they’re doing things right, they find themselves on procurement lists for tier one suppliers for things. So they know that they may have to satisfactorily answer questionnaires from other companies who wish to deal with them”.

For those organisations that were driven to manage OSH, the changes to the OSH system might also make it harder for them to access guidance. As noted by one consultant: “there’s less opportunity to

get advice from regulators […]. At the end of the day, for businesses that are looking to have good health and safety, they’ll continue to pay consultants or they’ll employ people within their organisation who are capable of giving them advice”. However, as one professional association interviewee noted: “the problem is a lot of the SMEs don’t necessarily have the resources that the larger organisations have”.

It was interesting that stakeholders presented this largely negative view, given that one of the drivers for these changes was for the benefit of business. However, some argued that these changes might be positive for SMEs. For example, a government representative noted: “it probably has removed

some of the burden for SMEs, given the nature of things. Hopefully the advice and guidance that’s actually appearing on the HSE website will be of more value to SMEs”. Although struggling to see the

overall positive outcomes, another government agency representative agreed with the notion that there could be less work for SMEs: “[there is] not going to be a massive benefit for SMEs at the

moment. I suppose you could argue that in terms of reporting, if we stick with that, then they’re not perhaps having to do so much paperwork, and reporting incidents, so there’s a benefit there”. Despite

this, some noted that, in the long term, this might prove to be more costly. Thus, overall, the benefit (if any) for business, and particularly SMEs, appeared short term, and perhaps at the detriment of long term benefit.

5.4.5 Impact on OSH standards

Perhaps the most important long term implication of the changes related to whether or not these would directly influence OSH standards in terms of outcomes such as work-related ill health, sickness absence, injuries and accidents. The view was proposed that the recent economic climate could worsen bias in the statistics by fuelling underreporting, for fear of losing one’s job. As one standardisation and certification body representative mentioned when discussing major problems in

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reporting: “I think the underreporting in small businesses […]. If I work for a company and injured

myself and I knew that if I reported I’d have the health and safety people around and they might close us down and it’s my job as well as the gaffers job. Yeah I may want to claim off him for losing the end of my finger. But it might be better to keep it quiet, and I’ve got a feeling, I think people are too frightened”.

An issue within this was the debated changes to RIDDOR. These included a change to the number of days an employee had to be absent before reporting of the incident was compulsory, and certain elements (especially in relation to health) removed from the reporting requirements. One professional association was sceptical about the proposals of the government: “when government said ‘oh we no

longer need to look at certain areas or we wanted to remove certain occupational disease reporting because the HSE gets its data from elsewhere’… but it didn’t say where they were actually getting that data, and a lot of commentators’ eyebrows were raised”.

However, some stakeholders could not foresee any down side to the RIDDOR changes. For example one government agency representative noted: “Well, I think the stats will reduce in terms of the

numbers, obviously because they’ve lengthened the RIDDOR time, when it needs to be reported. I think it’s quite a sensible move to be honest”. However, stakeholders also felt that this change could

add an element of bias to the statistics.

Taking these caveats in mind, interviewees tentatively predicted what they believed future OSH standards would look like. One trade association respondent suggested that a combination of government changes as well as macro changes would lead to increases in ill health: “you live in a

more uncertain world. Changes in terms of contracts of employment, or improving the employers’ ability to dismiss people, surrounded by all the other varying components, you would anticipate that stress and ill health from …obesity and an ageing workforce, which is going to have an associated increase in musculoskeletal issues, you would draw the conclusion that those figures are going to go up”.

A government agency representative felt that performance would be dependent on how duty holders responded to the increasing responsibility being placed upon them. However, other stakeholders were more certain that the changes would negatively impact OSH standards. As one union representative noted, commenting on the mechanism by which this might happen: “if there are forces that diminish

the effectiveness and the involvement of the safety reps, and if there is less consultation and less dialogue, less partnership work, we are certain that we will see a reverse of the positive developments that have happened in the UK in terms of accident rates and ill health. So we would expect accident rates to start going up again, and ill health is already going up and up and up, mainly stress, depression and anxiety”.

Another perspective on the mechanism of how changes could influence organisational practice was that a perception that OSH is not important, would lead to less engagement from business: “if they

[business] actually see any information in the press about a reduction in inspections etc. That won’t lead them to go out of their way to make sure things are hunky-dory in their firms, I don’t think. So [if] the idea of getting a visit was reduced, they’d probably put in less effort than they do now, not that they put a lot of effort in now”.

Ill-health in particular was mentioned as particularly worrying, although this was often down to broad macro factors. A standardisation and certification body interviewee noted that the economic climate would lead to a decrease in health: “I think for health things, psychosocial risk will increase I believe

because people will have five employees and they really need seven, they’ll try and get the five to do the seven’s work. And this will mean somebody will fall over from doing too many hours or whatever”.

While most of the predictions were that performance would decrease, a few stakeholders (notably