How to Build a Strong Health and Safety Culture in Logistics

This is an edited extract from A Practical Guide to Logistics.

Far too many people in the logistics industry fail to take health and safety sufficiently seriously. They may have seen articles in the media regarding the banning of children’s games or felt that compliance restricts their ability to ‘just get on with the job’. However, there are many good reasons to adopt a more rigorous approach. For example:

1. The moral element - There is a strong moral obligation on anyone running a business to ensure that everyone involved has the skills, knowledge, equipment and facilities to work safely, and to make sure that they do so.
2. The legal element - In almost every country there is relevant legislation, often including catch-all elements designed to ensure that nothing can be excused by saying that there is no specific law against it.
3. Effects on morale - If workers believe that their work is unsafe, morale will very quickly plummet, and their full attention will not be directed towards the job.
4. Reputational effects - If your business has a poor safety record, news will quickly spread. Recruitment will become more difficult and customers will be discouraged.
5. Financial effects - Reliance on insurance to pay compensation claims will not work. A poor claims record will result in a dramatic increase in premiums, and insurers may refuse future cover. Accident investigation and remedial action take up valuable management time, and if an accident results in delays to the service received by customers, they may well take their business elsewhere.

Neglecting health and safety is something which no business can afford to do.

Establishing the correct health and safety culture

We would all be horrified if we found that we were flying on an airliner, and the pilot had been drinking. There are of course laws which forbid this: for example, in India, every pilot and flight attendant is tested before every flight, and airlines have strict policies and procedures in place. However, arguably the most important factor is that it is culturally completely unacceptable in the aviation industry for a pilot to attempt to fly whilst drunk. Almost all pilots would be outraged by the idea, and incidents are therefore very rare.

Too often, health and safety is based on a ‘Don’t do that!’ approach. If rules are not followed, the reaction will be like that of a critical parent talking to a child: reiterate instructions and imply that the person not obeying the rules is stupid. The reality is that many people react negatively to such a style after the age of 10, so it does not work very well.

Why are risks taken?

Why are risks taken then? There are, in simple terms, three possible answers to this question:

1. It is impossible to perform the task safely.
2. It is difficult to do so.
3. There is no good reason.

Consider, for example, that a rule is in place requiring people to hold the handrail whilst climbing a particular set of stairs, but someone falls, having failed to do so. After investigation, possible reasons are:

1. There is no handrail.
2. There is a handrail, but it is badly fitted, it is very dirty or gives people splinters.
3. There is a clean, new, well-installed handrail but the person who fell did not use it.

In the first two cases, the blame clearly lies with the environment. In the last case, at least in narrow terms, the blame lies with the individual, but there may be other factors – perhaps several other handrails do give people splinters? Or perhaps there is a perception that any rule can be ignored because most of them usually are? However, in a total safety culture all handrails would be properly installed and in good condition, and the individual would feel motivated to use them, eliminating the risk in either event.

If you get the culture right first, that will be a lot more effective in reducing accidents than anything else.

Safety monitoring

I am a great believer in an old-fashioned technique called MBWA – Management By Wandering Around: walk around the operation, keep your eyes open and chat with people. The fact that you are taking an interest will in itself help to build up a rapport with the workforce. Sometimes you will spot something not being done properly: maybe pallets have been placed in front of the fire extinguishers. Alternatively, something might be mentioned by an employee – ‘I asked for some new gloves two weeks ago but they have not arrived’ or ‘The driver from XYZ always walks across the docks where we are operating forklifts rather than following the walkway – I asked them not to but they just swore at me’. Clearly, more formal steps also need to be taken, but MBWA can in many cases assist the process.

Tours and inspections

These are more formal than MBWA. They may be regular or take place without warning. Often a team will carry out the inspection together – perhaps management and union representatives from the Safety Committee, accompanied by a line manager. They should again look for hazards of any type, but should also have a standard checklist of items to verify – for example, is the PAT Testing on all electrical appliances up to date, and are forklifts parked in a safe place when not in use?

Ideally, nothing untoward will be found. However, the knowledge that such inspections are taking place will in itself act as a deterrent to breach of procedures. Records should be kept, including necessary actions. These should be followed up, and no issue allowed to persist without being rectified.

Statistical control

There is always a temptation to look at statistics and decide (consciously or subconsciously) that ‘there are fewer accidents than last year, so we can rest on our laurels and take no action’. This will be of little consolation to the people who are the victims of accidents, even if they are fewer in number than previously. There is always room for improvement, and the aim should be to eliminate accidents, not to reduce them to a notional acceptable level.

Similarly, issues identified during tours, inspections and audits should also be statistically recorded and analysed. The data from all these sources need to be analysed in detail, to identify unwelcome trends. Perhaps a particular type of incident occurs regularly. For example, if inspections consistently report that spillages are not cleared up promptly, this may indicate that it is unclear whose job it is to do so, or that someone is not doing their job properly – in either event, action is required before someone slips and suffers an injury.

Also, analysis needs to go beyond that of accident type. Similarly, if there are three teams that work rotating shifts, does one have more accidents than the others? If so, why? In short, the production of statistical reports should not be an end in itself. It will only be of benefit if the information is used proactively.

Health and safety audits

I would strongly recommend that full health and safety audits be included as part of your management system. The audit should be a comprehensive and searching examination of all aspects of the operation and must be completed with absolute honesty and impartiality. Temptations to avoid auditing particular areas where problems might be expected, to accept bland assurances that ‘if you mark us down as not having that problem, we will fix it’ or even to blatantly ignore an issue because it would be embarrassing to admit it, must be resisted. An audit is only worthwhile if conducted in a thorough and completely honest way. Whilst an audit by local management can be a very useful tool, I would therefore recommend that a major audit is conducted by an outsider. This might be a health and safety manager from head office, who tours depots to conduct such audits, or an external consultant, engaged specifically for the purpose.