Over the past 5 weeks or so, I have been working with the good people from the stats office as a DSE assessor- helping and advising their staff and management remain compliant as per the regulations and the company policy.
I was amazed at the great work they manage to produce and the information they have to analyze which then goes to governments and other bodies and becomes the fundamental building blocks which sets for example the GDP (gross domestic product) figure for the UK.
After speaking to just one worker there I manage to ascertain very quickly that I still have no idea what GDP actually is and moreover begged another which was why I even asked the question!!……Although, if you ever think that the staff here in Newport could ever be boring because all they deal in is figures and spreadsheets, think again…….they have a serious sense of humor and the five weeks flew by.
As an assessor, I did find however that ONS staff are very vulnerable to the typical symptoms of poor posture, bad backs, eye strains, shoulder pains and a host of other problems and that got me thinking that here is a company, who takes their responsibilities very seriously…but how many other companies out there don’t??, how many other companies out there only do what they have to do, and, as long as there is a financial reward tagged on to it (i.e. contractual or client specific) and this seems to be a huge failing.
We as a nation still tend to only undertake Health and safety as an after thought and most still definitely don’t plan in health and safety and the associated costs, and for me the most upsetting thing is that very few think of the benefits of undertaking these types of reviews on their staff which could then lead to better morale, lower sickness time, BETTER PRODUCTIVITY! to name just three.
On site in Newport however there is a dedicated team which is lead by Mark Beard (the ONS safety practitioner) and his counterpart in Mite – Matt Vinnicombe who are very aware of their responsibilities and who also take a moral view on every individuals health and well being on site. This is a wonderful policy to uphold and we should all take a leaf from this book and apply it to our own workplaces.
So ONS (Mark, Matt and everyone else I’ve missed), keep up the great work, I learnt allot in my brief time there and hope to be back in there soon helping out once again.