Not all countries are as safety concious as most here in the UK. But Marketing Stockport member and Health & Safety specialist Michelle Hay recently read and commented on, an article that highlighted a incident where you can own and/or run a business without any compulsory qualification in Health and Safety Management.
Thankfully for all businesses owners and their employees, in the UK it is a legal requirement that employers have to abide by the Health and safety at Work Act 1974 and the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 2006.
However, with that in mind, Michelle would like to share an incident that to this day seems beyond belief that it can still happen in Great Britain. The same Great Britain that holds the record for zero fatalities during the construction of the 2012 Olympics and is seen as one of the safest countries in the world. So here’s how the day went…
Michelle explains:
“We’d better not” was the response to my request to “lead on, let’s evacuate” as the fire alarms went off. It was day nine and my last day of training a workforce of 60 in fire safety awareness and manual handling. So it came as a shock that my learners were reluctant to practice what we had just covered. Only half of the people on site evacuated. It wasn’t a test or drill, it was a genuine alarm.
“When we returned to the training room, I was almost speechless at the lack of action taken by so many. Given that the site was an engineering business, and it had so many potentially dangerous hazards and risks, I needed to understand what was going wrong.
“I was told that the owners had instructed staff to … read what happened next
PS Please work safe and stay safe, because everyone expects to return home from work in good health. Don’t you?