Addressing health and safety issues

The thing with some organizations, is that they let issues such as health and safety slip. They create all the appropriate paperwork to be legally compliant, they jump through all the hoops required to have a health and safety committee and employee representation; they may even move forward with monthly meetings.

But is any of it actually making employees safer? Unfortunately, endless meetings and paperwork tends to generate nothing but more meetings and more paperwork. To be fair, I am a big fan of paperwork. If it's not worth writing down, I tend to doubt the worth of doing it, but that's the point, that after (or before) recording something, something needs to be done! ACTION needs to be put forward to reduce accidents and lost time. What frustrates me most is that employers tend to see these actions as costs, and fear that if they create real dialogue they're opening themselves up for endless vapid complaints from employees and a loss of authority. After all, the boss decides what's dangerous and what isn't, right?

Of course, then something inevitably happens. An employee falls and breaks a hip. Or perhaps gets a disease caused by asbestus in the workplace. Or huge fine from the government for violating the law.

Businesses need to understand the most financially viable solution is to invest short-term and collect long-term, rather than cheap out on getting the right equipment and ensuring everyone is following procedure (free since you need someone there to administer and make the policies regardless) to avoid such major costs that could shut you down, if not permanently, at least enough to seriously harm your business prospects.