Directors' role in health and safety

Growing numbers of board directors in the private, public and voluntary sectors are taking responsibility and providing leadership for health and safety. However, we still have some way to go to achieve the goal of all boards exercising corporate responsibility. In particular, we have to convince around one-in-five organisations with boards that do not provide direction or take responsibility and have no plans to do so.

HSC/E are committed to promoting greater director leadership, and achieving higher standards, through advice, guidance and enforcement , building on and invigorating the current voluntary measures in place by promoting examples of best practice, the benefits of board-level Corporate responsibility and the persuasive evidence of the economic and social benefits that director leadership brings.

Guidance

HSC/E published, in 2001, guidance for directors, CEOs and others at an equivalent level to voluntarily provide leadership on health and safety.

• Leading health and safety at work [450KB]
  Leadership actions for directors and board members

The guidance recommends five action points:

• The board needs to accept formally and publicly its collective role in providing health and safety leadership in its organisation.
• Each member of the board needs to accept their individual role in providing health and safety leadership for their organisation.
• The board needs to ensure that all board decisions reflect its health and safety intentions, as articulated in the health and safety policy statement.
• The board needs to recognise its role in engaging the active participation of workers in improving health and safety.
• The board needs to ensure that it is kept informed of, and alert to, relevant health and safety risk management issues. HSC recommends that boards appoint one of their numbers to be the health and safety director.

In a discussion of directors' responsibilities at its May 2006 meeting, HSC recognised the need to build on progress made since the publication of its guidance; new guidance is proposed, setting out how those responsibilities should be carried out, inlcuding practical approaches which are appropriate to different kinds of board (including SME’s, the public sector etc).

Research

• Health and safety responsibilities of company directors and management board members: 2001, 2003 and 2005 surveys. Final report (RR414)
  Published in 2006. It brings together the results of three surveys of the extent to which there is board level direction of health and safety in large private and public sector organisations The research showed that the percentage who report that health and safety is directed at a board level has risen form 58% in 2001 to 70% in 2005.
• Health and safety responsibilities of company directors and management board members RR135)
  Published in 2003. It included research carried out in 2000/01 to determine the baseline prior to the project. The research showed that 90% of the top 350 companies and 87% of large firms (more than 250 employees) had board level direction for health and safety.
• 'Case studies that identify and exemplify boards of directors who provide leadership and direction on occupational health and safety' (RR450)
  Published in 2006. The project produced 34 case studies that highlight boards of directors who provide leadership and direction in occupational health and safety, showing what they do and what the benefits are to their organisations.
• Director responsibility for health and safety - a set comprising of 8 pieces of research to evaluate the effectiveness of the legislative and non legislative measures on director responsibility in 2005.

The Government asked the Health and Safety Commission to evaluate the effectiveness of measures, both legislative and non-legislative, on director responsibility. HSC/E commissioned research to review all the available evidence to report to government, together with recommendations, in December 2005.