Top candidate in the now infamous Darwin awards, held yearly in honour of those silly sausages who come a cropper in style, must surely be the thirsty factory worker who toppled lips first into a vat of hot chocolate.
Or maybe the stripper who surprised everyone from inside a birthday cake . . . a year too late.
Mercifully, the workplace demise is now an increasingly rare event here in the UK.
In fact, the overall figure of fatalities in the work place has steadily fallen since records began. While any fatality is one too many, of some sort of comfort is that we are now a much safer nation of workers.
This improving picture is down to the fact businesses now take health and safety very seriously – and often the ultimate guardians of the workplace are in HR.
All work exposes people to hazards, of course: from fast-moving machinery to the nine-week-old lunch turning green and aggressive in the staff room fridge.
But working under the auspices of management and the HR team, a top notch Senior Health and Safety Adviser can ensure all risks are greatly reduced or removed altogether.
Not only will you provide your company with best practice, customer-focused and pragmatic health and safety support, you might also find yourself working in Policy and Operations, where your broad remit can involve delivering training courses.
There may also be scope to steer Governance and Assurance, including Health and Safety auditing.
Employers have a legal duty to protect the health and safety of their workforce. This might mean teaching construction workers to use scaffolding properly – making like a monkey is funny, but it’s not big or clever – or setting up computer workstations to lessen health risks.
It also makes good business sense. Keeping staff safe and healthy improves efficiency and productivity as fewer people are off on sick leave.
As any HR Adviser will tell you, effective training also helps reinforce a health and safety culture in the workplace.
They’ll also tell you this is more than setting up a safety video on day one for the new recruits. Just as office first aiders need annual refresher courses, regular updates are vital to keep those messages relevant.
Meanwhile, an HR Manager will often find themselves responsible for liaising with Health and Safety Officers across a huge range of job sectors.
The most obvious ones are industries with higher risk factors such as oil and gas, construction, chemicals, engineering or transport but they are also to be found employed in hotel and restaurant chains, hospitals, local authorities, colleges and universities.
These specialist HR operatives are expected to carry out risk assessments, advise on fire regulations or hazardous substances, go on site inspections and prepare health and safety strategies.
Often run in tandem with safety training, healthy career development is also crucial to any kind of business and that’s where another kind of HR specialist is key: a Training Officer.
Concerned with the professional development of staff they identify and deliver training programmes, carry out inductions and job appraisals as well as implementing e-learning.
All of this activity is precisely why even a glimpse on s1jobs shows that HR is home to an incredible variety of opportunities in Health and Safety and Training areas.
Recent postings have included a construction firm seeking a Training and Competence Coordinator, a charity looking for Training and Development Officer and a food manufacturer needing a Training Manager.
When it comes to protecting our physical, mental – and career – health and wellbeing, HR really is the first line of defence.
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