SAFETY GUIDE. A Guide to Health and Safety in the Motor Trade

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2 Introduction The motor trade faces unique challenges when it comes to managing health and safety, particularly if the business operates across multiple sites or is rapidly expanding. Vita Safety have been supporting clients in the motor trade for years and provide support to one of the UK s biggest dealership groups, who operate over 70 sites nationwide. We ve created a handy guide covering how to deal with some of the key issues we ve found in the motor trade. Working through this guide will help senior decision makers protect their workforce and manage health, safety and wellbeing effectively and profitably. It provides a framework to set the direction, resource effectively, monitor progress and deal with common issues. Contents 3. Leading a Safe Dealership Delegating Risk Management Plan Do Check Act Are Your Leaders Capable? 4. All Safety, Not Enough Health, in the Motor Trade Is health the poor relation to safety in your business? Make health and wellbeing a board level issue How to engage your workforce Practical advice around hearing loss and HAVS 6. Three Easy Steps to Profitable Health & Safety Avoid FFI (Fee For Intervention) Maintain your standards Ensure contractors meet your internal standards 9. How to Investigate a Routine Accident Investigate Deal with the incident and get recording Visual evidence Documentation Collate and learn 2 - Vita Safety -

3 Leading a Safe Dealership Basic day to day management of health and safety within a car dealership is a tough job. There are so many complex issues and challenges it is easy to see why health and safety often gets swept under the carpet until something serious happens. Strong leadership is so important to ensure the safety and health of your workforce. Delegating Risk Management The only way that a positive health and safety culture can be embedded into the foundations of your dealership business is through a strong leader who fully grasps the tasks at hand, leads by example and delegates tasks to their workforce. This is easier said than done. Many business heads have been promoted through the ranks, developing strong management skills but not fully embracing the broader context around occupational safety and health. There was a time when simply complying with the law was enough, but leaders now need to develop sustainable business practices and responsible behaviours to drive a culture of health and safety throughout the business. Building capability and culture with clear and strategic vocational health and safety objectives will, without fail, make sure that the dealership becomes more effective, efficient and above all, safe. Plan Do Check Act The key to successful capability building is to diagnose systematically, design solutions and deliver change to address performance issues within the business. True leaders can look at current resources and identify areas of weakness in terms of health and safety capability. This doesn t just mean in terms of staff knowledge but in areas such as skills, processes, tools and systems that will be required to drive health and safety forward. In terms of the workforce, if the capability is there it will just need nurturing to enable it to continue to grow. However, if there is an obvious skills gap, the leader needs to take control. The Plan Do Check Act process is a powerful four-step management method to help leaders identify skills gaps and foster continuous improvement of processes. Are Your Leaders Capable? Failure to ensure that senior managers have the ability, knowledge and confidence to influence health and safety change will make the system fail from the outset. The organisation, at board level, needs to analyse the senior management team and assess their competency to carry out this responsibility to ensure effective health and safety management from the top down. For those leaders who do not yet possess adequate skills, the IOSH Leading Safely course is ideal. It s a short course designed for anyone in a senior management or leadership role, to help them understand the true value of health and safety and give them the ability to drive change through the day to day activities of the dealership. The key to successful capability building is to diagnose systematically, design solutions and deliver change to address performance issues within the business. True leaders can look at current resources and identify areas of weakness in terms of health and safety capability. 3 - Vita Safety -

4 We have delivered the IOSH Leading Safely course in countless motor dealerships and the immediate successes have been invaluable to the organisation. By the end of the session candidates have gone from managers to leaders and made serious personal commitments to the businesses overall health and safety strategy. Examples include: Leaders delivering projects to rebrand health and safety within the organisation to realign it with the business development strategy. Leaders implement a deputy health and safety co-ordinator in their dealership to delegate responsibility and upskill the workforce. Personal commitments by leaders to attend all interviews for new starters to ensure that the organisation s commitment to health and safety is understood from the outset. Effective health and safety leadership starts from the top down Leaders need to be skilled and empowered to drive forward change in their individual dealerships and given the resources to improve the capability of their teams. Ensuring that continuous health and safety improvement is a formal objective of the business provides the business case for senior managers to motivate their teams. All Safety, Not Enough Health, in the Motor Trade? Did you know that work related illnesses affect double the amount of people as injuries? Musculoskeletal disorders, stress, respiratory conditions, skin disorders, hearing loss, back pain, the list is long and it s costing UK businesses a fortune, as well as affecting the lives of over 1 million people. In 2014/15 alone, work related illness cost businesses 9.3 billion, almost double the cost of injury ( 4.8 billion). Last year, work related illness and injury combined, resulted in 30.4 million working days lost! These startling statistics make it shockingly clear that managing health, should be just as important as safety. Find out how you can create a positive culture around health and wellbeing in your dealership business. Leaders need to be skilled and empowered to drive forward change in their individual dealerships and given the resources to improve the capability of their teams. Ensuring that continuous health and safety improvement is a formal objective of the business provides the business case for senior managers to motivate their teams. Is health the poor relation to safety in your business? First things first, ask yourself three questions: 1. Do you struggle to engage your teams in health and wellbeing? 2. Are you seeing increasing issues with hearing loss and hand arm vibration syndrome (HAVS)? 3. Are you concerned about, or experiencing, fines and fee for intervention related to health issues? If the answer to any of these questions is yes, then read on. Make health and wellbeing a board level issue It s vital to make your board interested in health and wellbeing for change to become a strategic objective for the business. This can be a challenge as the impact of improving health and wellbeing is not always certain or immediate. However, as the old saying goes, what gets measured, gets done, so provide your board with a compelling story, backed up by statistics, to demonstrate the personal and business benefits. The excellent online resources from the IOSH No Time To Lose campaign will help you make your case. 4 - Vita Safety -

5 How to engage your workforce Health is a notoriously difficult issue to communicate, just look at how difficult it is for the government to sell the benefits of healthy lifestyles! That said, there are techniques that can help to change your company s culture when it comes to health and wellbeing: Train people to understand the immediate risks of bad practice, but also the future consequences on their lives and those of their loved ones. For example, when training people on the risks of repetitive strain injuries, give context on how it could affect both their work and family life in the future. Make designing and developing wellbeing campaigns a collaborative process to get workforce buy in. This creates a community environment around health and is more likely to lead to cultural change. Practical advice around hearing loss and HAVS Illness caused by historical exposure to noise and vibration is common in the motor trade. Whilst we cannot change the past, we can impact the future. Here s our best practice advice. Find out if you still have a problem. Complete exposure sampling for noise and vibration, including personal dose as well as equipment measurements. Using medical surveillance results and the above sampling, put in place person specific risk assessments and control measures. Make it site specific, don t rely on generic risk assessments. Use professionally qualified consultants to measure exposure and support this with site specific risk assessments using the HSE calculators for noise and vibration. (Remember that taking measurements is not the completed risk assessment, but forms an input into your risk assessment.) Provide easy to follow information for your technicians about the effects of noise and vibration and explain the measures you have in place to protect them. Use film, photographs and other media for clear communication. Keep records. It goes without saying that the HSE will expect to see very clear physical and written evidence that you have the right control measures in place. Technology now makes it easy to monitor the potential for both noise and HAV exposure in real time. Some solutions now offer wearable technology, paired to the employee, rather than just attached to the plant or equipment. Ensure that more than one person at each site has knowledge of and access to, all the evidence of your health programmes, should an HSE inspector call. Promote health and wellbeing to protect your people and your business Protecting the health of your people now and in the future, is not only morally the right thing to do, it will also lead to a reduction in lost work time and an increase in productivity. Not to mention protecting your business from costly action from regulators and expensive insurance premiums. With that in mind, it s no surprise that successful organisations pride themselves on the health and wellbeing of their workforce. 5 - Vita Safety -

6 3 Easy Steps to Profitable Health & Safety You may have heard the saying: If you think safety is expensive, try an accident! The cost of getting health and safety wrong can be sky high from fees, penalties and fines, to insurance pay outs, loss of work time and damaged equipment or products. Not to mention your moral responsibility to protect people working in or customers visiting your dealership. Here are our three easy steps to profitable health and safety. 1. Avoid FFI (Fee For Intervention) Fee for Intervention (FFI) was introduced in 2012 and allows the HSE to charge firms for the time its inspectors take to identify any material breaches in health and safety regulations, all at a cost of 129 per hour. The revenue generated from FFI by the end of January 2014 cost UK businesses over 10.6m. Avoiding these costly fees and fines isn t rocket science. Success starts with a written health and safety policy, proactive assessment and management of health and safety risks and sourcing expert support to ensure compliance with regulations. How to avoid fines, penalties and improvement or prohibition notices A structured health and safety management plan is vital to ensure compliance with health and safety laws. It should include the following: An appointed health and safety person either internal or an external professional A regularly reviewed health and safety policy which meets current legal requirements and best practice Regularly reviewed written risk assessments of all activities that may affect the health and safety of employees and visitors Health and safety training for staff that is formally recorded Safe working practices for hazardous processes Regular health and safety audits of the work environment, systems, procedures and documentation A system for recording and investigating accidents or incidents Avoiding these costly fees and fines isn t rocket science. Success starts with a written health and safety policy, proactive assessment and management of health and safety risks and sourcing expert support to ensure compliance with regulations. 6 - Vita Safety -

7 2. Maintain your standards Health and safety is both your legal and moral responsibility as a business owner. It should be part of the everyday process of running your business and an integral part of workplace behaviours and attitudes. Effectively managing for health and safety is simple, it requires just two core elements: 1. Leadership and management Health and safety should be built into the core of your dealership leader s responsibilities and management should be sustained and systematic containing the following steps: Plan: say what you want to happen Do: make sure there are systems in place to provide the tools and equipment to do the job Check: make sure the work is being done safely Act and learn: listen to problems and successes and make improvements. To maintain standards, put in place management systems that include: periodic health assessments monitoring sick absences line management supervision accurate accident and near-miss reporting 2. A trained/skilled workforce operating in an environment where people are trusted and involved Skills and knowledge can deteriorate over time so to reinforce good practice, you need a system that will: regularly assess your workers ability maintain agreed health standards respond to the changing needs of individuals Supervision is pivotal to help you understand your worker s skills and knowledge. Ask yourself: Who will supervise each worker? How will the worker be supervised? Who will the supervisor report to? Creating a positive health and safety culture will ensure you maintain the standards required to avoid FFI and protect anyone working in or visiting your business. 7 - Vita Safety -

8 3. Ensure contractors meet your internal standards Using contractors is common in dealership businesses, for maintenance, repairs, installation, construction, demolition and many other jobs. However, many accidents involve contractors as they often don t follow the same rules and processes as you. Sometimes you may have more than one contractor on site. You need to think about how their work may affect each other and how they interact with your activities. Clearly, in these circumstances there is more chance of something being overlooked. To manage contractors effectively follow our simple five step process: Step 1: Planning Define the job Identify hazards Assess risks Eliminate and reduce the risks Specify health and safety conditions Discuss with contractor (if selected) Step 2: Choosing a contractor What safety and technical competence is needed? Ask questions Get evidence Explain the job and the site, including site rules Ask for a safety method statement Decide whether subcontracting is acceptable. If so, how will health and safety be ensured? Sometimes you may have more than one contractor on site. You need to think about how their work may affect each other and how they interact with your activities. Clearly, in these circumstances there is more chance of something being overlooked. Step 3: Contractors working on site All contractors sign in and out Name a site contact Reinforce health and safety information and site rules Check the job and allow work to begin Step 4: Keeping a check Assess the degree of contact needed and monitor progress: Is the job going as planned e.g. using necessary Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) according to the conditions of the permit-to-work system (PTW)?? Is the contractor working safely and as agreed? Have there been any incidents? Has there been a change in personnel? Are any special arrangements required e.g. due to changes in timing, out of hours or weekend work?? Have any problems arisen which mean you need to rethink the job? 8 - Vita Safety -

9 Step 5: Reviewing the work Review the job and contractor How effective was your planning? How did the contractor perform? How did the job go? Record the lessons Summary Effective health and safety is based on effective leadership, thorough processes and consistent standards. Though health and safety can be considered expensive, effective management can not only eliminate the costs of getting it wrong, but also help your business increase productivity through a healthy and engaged workforce. How to Investigate a Routine Accident Any accident, no matter how small should be a cause for concern as it demonstrates that either safety training needs reviewing or there are risks that are not being adequately managed. In the event an accident does occur, here are our five steps to help you deal with them efficiently, confidently and comprehensively. 1. Investigate There is no such thing as a routine accident. All accidents regardless of severity should be subject to a comprehensive investigation so that lessons can be learnt and future reoccurrences prevented. In addition, what seems like a minor incident can lead to long term injuries and a serious cost to the business for any personal injury claim. Imagine that a worker had slipped on some soap suds in the valet bay, when valeting a car 2 years, 364 days ago. There were no major injuries at the time, it simply went in the accident book and got filed away. Now a solicitor s letter has landed on your desk claiming for a long term chronic back injury with a loss adjusters reserve of 45,000. It s vital to investigate the accident, as soon as it occurs and put in place the measures required to protect your workforce. If not, you could be required to start your investigation 2 years, 364 days after the event! 2. Deal with the incident and get recording With routine incidents, dealing with the immediate issues should be reasonably simple and stress free. Ensure that first aid is given but whilst your firsit aider is treating the injured person, take your witness statements. It s imperative that this is done as soon as possible, so that information is fresh in the mind. Don t leave it for the next day or even longer. We have been involved with personal injury claims where witness statements have been taken over a week after the incident happened and in that time stories become embellished or lose accuracy. Using the above scenario of the valet bay accident, what started off as: Billy slipped on some soap suds can soon evolve to Billy went flying across the valeting bay and smashed into the wall, it was like a car crash, never seen anything like it in my life! 9 - Vita Safety -

10 Negative witness statements are as strong and effective as positive ones. If someone didn t hear or see anything, that information is just as important, so ensure that statement is recorded. This could be extremely beneficial in a spurious claim. 3. Visual evidence Nothing is more powerful than visual evidence, so whilst someone else is taking the witness statements, get photographing. Using the camera on your mobile phone is perfect as the photos are date/time stamped, giving you valuable evidence for any future claim. Make sure you get photographs of the entire area where the accident happened, as well as the injury and any other evidence you think is important. Back up these images as they will be massively important and you will need to keep them for at least three years. You don t want to risk losing them if you damage your phone or discard it when you receive your annual upgrade. CCTV is a loss adjuster s dream. If you have been fortunate enough to have captured the incident on your system, make sure you get a copy as soon as possible, it will save you from trawling through hours of footage years down the line and avoid the risk of the incident being recorded over. 4. Documentation Over the next few days you should gather together all the information you have and file it. Nothing is more powerful than visual evidence, so whilst someone else is taking the witness statements, get photographing. Using the camera on your mobile phone is perfect as the photos are date/time stamped, giving you valuable evidence for any future claim. You may think some information is irrelevant, but you would be surprised what information is important to gather. If you don t think it s relevant, it probably is. Make sure you copy and keep all: Training and induction records Risk assessments Any reports or records of previous similar incidents Safe working procedures/agreed safe systems of work Lifting Operations and Lifting Equipment Regulations (LOLER) thorough examination and inspection records Servicing and planned preventative maintenance records Minutes of meetings Witness statements communications Health surveillance records Audit and inspection reports 10 - Vita Safety -

11 5. Collate and learn The reason we adopt the above procedure for any incident, no matter how small, is to prevent a further accident by identifying the appropriate measure that we need to put in place. This could be blatantly obvious and easy to fix, blatantly obvious and costly to fix or more of a long-term culture issue and behavioural change. Either way controls need to be actioned. If a capital expenditure is needed you need to make it very clear to the authorising department that this is for health and safety purposes. Be prepared to outline your risk assessment to show the rationale behind your request. Managing Health and Safety Effectively Whether your business is a car dealership, a retail business or office based, it s vital to accurately and thoroughly record accidents to help you identify trends and address risks. The same or similar accidents could be happening elsewhere in the business, in other offices or locations. Comprehensively managing any accident, no matter how small, will help you protect your workforce and position your business as a well-managed risk to both insurers and the HSE. Help is at hand Vita Safety was founded in early 2006 and have been supporting clients in the motor trade for years, providing support to one of the UK s biggest dealership groups, who operate over 70 sites nationwide. We get to know your dealership business, your processes and your people and give you an independent perspective on areas of risk, with strategies to help you continually improve. We work in partnership with you to put in place robust processes to ensure your workforce is always protected and your business remains compliant with the latest legislation changes, whilst reducing the administrative headaches health and safety often creates. To find out more about how we can help your dealership business, get in touch (Manchester) (London) enquiries@vitasafety.com 11 - Vita Safety -