Managing your people’s exposure to Hand Arm Vibration (HAV) is not just about avoiding the wrath of the Health and Safety Executive.
However, the news this week of a local authority having to put aside millions for employee compensation claims and two Derbyshire companies being fined £290,000+ for failing to adequately manage the risk to their employees of exposure to vibration is a cautionary tale.
That this was the case for as long as nine years, according to reports, suggests that this issue just wasn’t on the radar of the companies involved. And there’s the rub.
We measure our staff’s productivity as a matter of course. We keep an eye on their timekeeping to ensure that they’re all pulling their weight. And we absolutely insist that they wear the appropriate Personal Protective Equipment – because all of that that just makes sense doesn’t it? These are so much part of modern people management today that we do them almost without thinking.
So what about HAVS risk management? Regrettably it’s a mixed picture. And some industry views around HAV monitoring don’t help – but I don’t have the space to go into that here. The bigger issue is that HAV monitoring has to become part of the business agenda for organisations who use vibrating equipment in the same way that hard hats, high vis vests and safety boots are.
And I use the term “business agenda” deliberately because HAVs is not just an occupational health issue. The debilitating effects of Vibration White Finger can be devastating for sufferers, but they can affect your business in so many ways.
Absenteeism can be common among sufferers, creating resource issues for your operational people. Losing skilled workers results in costly recruitment processes. Insurance claims are time consuming to manage and can result in hefty hikes in premiums. And then we come back to the regulations and the salutary lesson learned by those companies earlier this week.
In February this year, new sentencing guidelines came into force where large companies could face fines of over £10 million for the most serious health and safety offences. The guidelines will apply regardless of the date of the offence. You need to monitor vibration exposure to effectively asses, remove or reduce residual risks as required by law.
Put your people at the top of the business agenda by monitoring their exposure to this dangerous and manageable risk.
