Personnel Today
  • OHW+
  • Join
  • Resources
    • Clinical governance
    • Disability
    • Ergonomics
    • Health surveillance
    • OH employment law
    • OH service delivery
    • Research
    • Return to work and rehabilitation
    • Sickness absence management
    • Wellbeing and health promotion
  • Conditions
    • Mental health
    • Musculoskeletal disorders
    • Blood pressure
    • Cancer
    • Cardiac
    • Dementia
    • Diabetes
    • Respiratory
    • Stroke
  • CPD
  • Webinars
  • OHW Awards
  • Jobs
  • Personnel Today

Register
Log in
Personnel Today
  • OHW+
  • Join
  • Resources
    • Clinical governance
    • Disability
    • Ergonomics
    • Health surveillance
    • OH employment law
    • OH service delivery
    • Research
    • Return to work and rehabilitation
    • Sickness absence management
    • Wellbeing and health promotion
  • Conditions
    • Mental health
    • Musculoskeletal disorders
    • Blood pressure
    • Cancer
    • Cardiac
    • Dementia
    • Diabetes
    • Respiratory
    • Stroke
  • CPD
  • Webinars
  • OHW Awards
  • Jobs
  • Personnel Today

Health and safetyOccupational HealthWellbeingOpinion

Devil’s advocate: It’s time to scrap the ‘six-pack’

by Personnel Today 28 Apr 2010
by Personnel Today 28 Apr 2010

The European Union has been the source of some of the UK’s most prominent health and safety legislation. The story goes back a very long way, but really began to dominate UK thinking with the ‘six-pack’ ‘(Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1992).

When the six-pack was launched it resulted in a flurry of activity. Workstations and manual handling tasks were assessed by the thousand as responsible employers assured their compliance with the new regulations. More difficult to implement were the workplace regulations. Nobody really understood what to do with them (and they probably still don’t).

High hopes

The six-pack spawned new industries as legions of trainers developed courses to train people who never really lifted anything how to lift things properly if they ever did. Entrepreneurial IT geeks created programmes to train people how to assess and use their own computer workstation even though their exposure to risk was negligible. High-street opticians welcomed a cash cow of unnecessary eye tests and pointless spectacles that the workers never wore. Academics re-wrote curricula. With bated breath, the health and safety industry waited for a quantum reduction in disease.

Twenty years later, we are still waiting.

Implications

Over time, the full implications of the EU directives became ever clearer. A litigants’ delight, the directives didn’t concern themselves with issues such as reasonable practicability, but absolute duty. Yes, the training may be a complete waste of time, but you have to do it anyway.

Evidence

The much vaunted impact on morbidity just didn’t arrive. Backs still ache, wrists are still sore, eyes are still tired, and minds are still stressed.

The improvements to health were never going to arrive – the steps required by the legislation had no basis in evidence. The impact of intervention was assumed, and nobody made any meaningful attempt to test whether the proposed laws would actually deliver anything more than a huge pile of bureaucracy.

Now evidence is emerging. Manual handling training doesn’t work.1 And there are no meaningful interventions that lead to sustained improvements in mental health.2 But we are still left with a legacy of absolute duties to do pointless things. And while money is being wasted on things that definitely don’t work, we can’t afford to do things that might and can.

Recently, the EU published New and Emerging Risk in Occupational Safety and Health.3 Apart from nanotechnology, the EU Agency hasn’t identified anything new at all. With any luck, this means it won’t promote a new tranche of whimsical legislation and intervention without any basis in evidence.

What we need is for the EU to invest time in scrapping its own old, unsuccessful legislation. In this they have omitted the most insidious emergent health and safety risk – the stubborn retention of discredited rules and regulations.

Like many in their youth, the EU proudly sported a six-pack. And like many as they grow older, wiser and less vain, the efforts to sustain it should be given up for more meaningful concerns.

Dr Richard Preece is a consultant occupational physician.

References

1. http://occmed.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/60/2/101

2. http://www.nice.org.uk/nicemedia/pdf/MentalWellbeingWorkFinalReport.pdf

3. http://osha.europa.eu/en/publications/outlook/en_te8108475enc.pdf

Avatar
Personnel Today

previous post
Salary sacrifice and voucher schemes: European court ruling means employers may be forced to pay millions in unpaid VAT
next post
Election 2010: Why fair pay policies should matter to HR

You may also like

Three in 10 say physical health has worsened...

20 May 2022

Obesity prevalence projections show 36% will be obese...

20 May 2022

Nurses leaving due to pressure and workplace culture

18 May 2022

Bald move: Tribunal was right in sex-related harassment...

17 May 2022

NHS pressures leaving thousands waiting for cancer diagnosis

17 May 2022

Long NHS waits meaning many with long Covid...

17 May 2022

Grants scheme set up to support women’s health...

16 May 2022

Crumbling school buildings ‘risk to life’ suggests leak

16 May 2022

‘Gulf War Syndrome’ caused by release of nerve...

13 May 2022

Workers feeing increasingly anxious, burnt out and fearful...

13 May 2022

  • The importance of being an ethical leader and how to become one PROMOTED | What is ethical leadership?...Read more
  • RPO Report: 2022, The Year to Outsource PROMOTED | Employers should be overwhelmed with choice...Read more
  • Report: Enabling organisational agility through talent & people success PROMOTED | Work has been challenged...Read more
  • Employee Trends 2022 report PROMOTED | Edenred research on employees analysed the key employees’ trends for 2022...Read more
  • How finance apprenticeships can boost business PROMOTED | As the world’s most forward-thinking professional accountancy body...Read more
  • Paul Devoy: Showing appreciation to the Investors in People community PROMOTED | Ask most people what comes to mind when you mention Investors in People...Read more
  • White paper: How digitalisation can support evolving occupational health PROMOTED | Download this free white paper to discover how digitalisation can help occupational health meet emerging challenges...Read more

PERSONNEL TODAY

About us
Contact us
Browse all HR topics
Email newsletters
Content feeds
Cookies policy
Privacy policy
Terms and conditions

JOBS

Personnel Today Jobs
Post a job
Why advertise with us?

EVENTS & PRODUCTS

The Personnel Today Awards
The RAD Awards
Employee Benefits
Forum for Expatriate Management
OHW+
Whatmedia

ADVERTISING & PR

Advertising opportunities
Features list 2022

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Instagram
  • Linkedin


© 2011 - 2022 DVV Media International Ltd

Personnel Today
  • OHW+
  • Join
  • Resources
    • Clinical governance
    • Disability
    • Ergonomics
    • Health surveillance
    • OH employment law
    • OH service delivery
    • Research
    • Return to work and rehabilitation
    • Sickness absence management
    • Wellbeing and health promotion
  • Conditions
    • Mental health
    • Musculoskeletal disorders
    • Blood pressure
    • Cancer
    • Cardiac
    • Dementia
    • Diabetes
    • Respiratory
    • Stroke
  • CPD
  • Webinars
  • OHW Awards
  • Jobs
  • Personnel Today