The Health and Safety Coach recognizes that, in order to change behaviour and weed out complacency and bad habits that are the primary cause of so many workplace accidents, managers need to be:
• challenged about their assumptions;
• empowered to help them see things through their own eyes; and
• involved in finding their own solutions for avoiding the risks we all face at work.
This resource provides over 100 questionnaires, covering the full gamut of Health and Safety at Work. Each contains a range of tough reflective questions for the manager to answer.
Working through any one of the questionnaires gives you a complete picture of the topic and the issues you need to think about to ensure safe working. Just like a human coach, some of the questions help you define the area and the risks associated with it; others encourage you to seek information you may not already have; and others challenge what you do (or don't do) at present and discourage you from avoiding the issue.
Alongside the questions, the Coach provides mini-case studies and dilemmas as a vivid reminder that health and safety is about people and to put the risks and hazards into real perspective.
The Health and Safety Coach can be used:
• for pre- and post-safety training;
• during training sessions;
• as a structure for one-to-one coaching;
• as a tool to help managers to talk to and involve their people; and
• for managers to work through on their own.
Managers may be resistant to, or ignore, their responsibility for health and safety because:
• they choose to be selectively ignorant;
• they are frustrated by what they see as their lack of influence;
• they lack confidence; and
• they are frightened of their responsibility.
The Health and Safety Coach will challenge their ignorance. It will show them how simple it is to start the process of good practice and demystify or shrink health and safety to manageable proportions. Best of all, it does it in a way that requires no exceptional management time, new skills or significant financial resources.
Reviews
'a valuable resource to the novice occupational health professional or safety adviser.' Occupational Health, August 2001
'This is indeed a valuable compendium providing questionnaires and checklists across the range of policies, procedures and tasks necessary to plan, implement and monitor Health and Safety practice … If you are [on] the look-out for either or both a training programme or a basis for creating company wide management programme for Health and Safety, I would recommend this most highly.' Judith Usiskin, TrainingZONE website, August 2001
'If you can answer the questions in this publication completely honestly and are modest enough to accept that you could manage Health & Safety more effectively, there is every chance that the Health and Safety Coach will be of great benefit to you as an individual, to the organisation that employs you and most importantly to your fellow employees and their families.' Richard Meadows, Health and Safety Manager, Fogarty Ltd, October 2001
'altogether an enormous variety and depth of content, guaranteed to keep the reader focussed, exercised, alert and stimulated to think further and creatively … This publication merits wide readership and application.' Occupational Safety and Health, December 2001
'This is a very interesting publication which has a refreshing approach to the practice of health and safety management … I would suggest that for those undertaking training sessions with managers and supervisors the initial investment (of £225) is well worth while.' The Health and Safety Practitioner, January 2002
'The questions posed are likely to take many safety advisers into previously unexplored territory and the author is to be congratulated for this … During 35 years in health and safety, this reviewer has not encountered a text like this one … every safety adviser and safety trainer should have access to a copy and begin to work out how they will get managers to answer the questions, and take ownership of the answers they produce.' Journal of the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health, Volume 5, Issue 2, 2001
About the Author
Christine Martin MIOSH, MIIRSM runs her own Health and Safety Practice in Lincoln. All of the work undertaken by Christine is based on the philosophy of helping others to help themselves. When working with her clients, Christine uses her knowledge and many years of experience within the field of Health and Safety to advise, encourage and support them in their efforts to find sensible, simple and, above all, workable solutions for themselves, to their health and safety problems.
