A campaign to demonstrate the value of health and safety in enabling events, projects and new ventures has “truly taken off” – as the profession fights back against negative myths with real-life examples of how health and safety practitioners remove barriers to safe and healthy work.
Safety4Good shows how the people dedicated to promoting safety and wellbeing at work also volunteer their time and expertise to proactively protect and serve their communities.
More than 40 people came together in London recently to galvanise more support from safety and health leaders and senior managers.
Simon Bliss, a specialist safety and health recruitment agency boss who developed Safety4Good, said:
“Safety and health professionals are all about helping others. Their entire ethos is about saving lives and making work and workplaces healthier and more fulfilling. They’re also generous with their time and their advice, so this idea really seemed to strike a chord.
“Safety4good has truly taken off. Last night was a huge success made so by the energy in the room and the contribution of all attendees. It is truly inspirational to work alongside an industry where the professionals share so much knowledge and collaboration with each other selflessly, to make the world a safer place.”
Ruth Denyer, Group Risk Director at ITV and one of the first people Simon approached with his idea, coined its name, Safety4Good. She hosted Tuesday’s event at ITV headquarters in London.
“For me, it’s all about enabling not-for-profits and charities to get access to high-quality, free help and advice that will enable them to achieve their goals,” she said. “Often health and safety is seen to be a barrier to things happening. In reality, this is rarely the case and with good advice and direction the health and safety community can dispel that belief.
“When I donate my time to a charity I want it to be as valuable as possible to them, so I wanted to see if there is a way, as a group, we could donate professional time really effectively to small organisations in this sector.”
Another board member of Safety4Good, Tim Eldridge, Global Head of Health and Safety at HSBC and a Vice-President of IOSH, said: “The safety community is very good at sharing knowledge and solutions with one another. There’s no such thing as a new problem, so IOSH professionals are happy to help others out.”
For more about the initiative and to show your support, visit www.safety4good.com
Caption:
The Board members of Safety4Good (l-r) Richard Orton (IOSH), James Pomeroy (Lloyd’s Register), Ruth Denyer (ITV), Simon Bliss (Safety4Good founder), Joscelyne Shaw (Mates in Mind) and Karl Simons (Thames Water) – from the IOSH web news page
