Next year will be an important year for the safety and health profession, particularly in meeting the responsibilities that chartered status places on safety and health practitioners.
IOSH president Neil Budworth told guests at the annual dinner: “I’m the first president who is a chartered safety and health practitioner and who can address chartered professionals. This illustrates how far we have come, but we still have some way to go.”
A safety culture can only be successful if everyone takes an active and positive interest in workplace health and safety. Encouraging and maintaining this interest will be one of the challenges facing IOSH members, and the profession, over the coming year.
Railway professionals will be urged to manage their own corporate and social responsibilities at the ‘Policy into Practice’ conference on 6 December at Glaziers Hall in London. The IOSH Railway Group will bring together key figures from the sector to discuss meeting the challenges of regulation.
Immediate past president Lawrence Waterman said: “We need to bring our professional support to directors and senior managers, and help everyone to understand what a vital role they play and how we can help them in maintaining the health and safety standards of their organisations. We have a responsibility to our employees, and to our passengers, to make every effort to secure their safety.”
The new IOSH ‘Working safely’ training package was launched at London Zoo last month, complete with interactive quizzes and a completely revised approach to basic health and safety training.
This delegate-friendly package is the result of research and a pilot scheme conducted with training providers, aimed at engaging people with the subject, both during the course and within the workplace. IOSH’s ‘Managing safely’ course is the next to undergo a transformation and will be available in 2006.
