Editorial
Campaigning for OSH: promoting validated and authoritative information on risk assessment
Sheila Pantry OBE
September 2008
Risk assessment is key to reducing accidents and workplace illness and the start of the risk management process. It enables employers to understand the action that they need to take to improve workplace health and safety, as well as productivity.
Reducing work-related accidents and illness through better risk assessment is the focus of the new 2008 Europe-wide information campaign, developed by the European Occupational Safety and Health Agency (EU-OSHA) and addressing high risk sectors and small and medium-sized enterprises especially
The change to a two-year cycle gives the Agency an opportunity to develop a longer-term approach to its campaigning activities under a single umbrella activity - the Healthy Workplace: Good for you - Good for business and the next theme will be Risk Assessment during 2008-2009.
The European Agency for Safety and Health at Work launches the Healthy Workplaces campaign on Risk Assessment with a press conference in Brussels.
Jukka Takala, Director of EU-OSHA, highlights the importance of the campaign topic and invites everyone to participate in the campaign activities that will take place over the coming two years.
Run by the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work, the campaign involves employers, workers, workers' safety representatives, practitioners, preventive services, policy makers and other stakeholders in improving health and safety at workplace level.
You can find out more about the campaign and the multilingual information packs, factsheets and information sheets with handy tips to help you organise and manage activities and other useful resources by going to https://osha.europa.eu/en/healthy-workplaces-campaigns/previous-healthy-workplaces-campaigns
You can find even more information by looking at the quality guidance produced by organisations and government bodies from around the world. These pieces of guidance really do help OSH directors and managers obtain further information on how other organisations have succeeded in lightening the load. So to find out more why not use some of the reliable sources in collections of validated and authoritative information such as FIREINF, OSH UPDATE and IRISH OSH UPDATE. These collections are continuously enlarged as new information is published.
For a 15 DAY FREE - NO OBLIGATION TRIAL contact: Sheila Pantry Associates Ltd | Tel: +44 (0) 1909 771024 | Fax: +44 (0) 1909 772829 | email: sp@sheilapantry.com | or fill in the Interest form www.sheilapantry.com/interest.html
FIREINF and OSH UPDATE - are you using them? If not, why not?
More information on health and safety at work - not only from Europe but around the World, including advice and guidance, legislation and much more can be found by checking out the OSH UPDATE electronic collection of information sources. Seekers will find a wealth of authoritative and validated advice from around the world. There are over 800,000 records in 19 authoritative databases - with thousand of full text links. Best practices, case studies, journal articles, reports and knowledge of systems are in OSH UPDATE www.oshupdate.com.
Also you may find FIREINF www.fireinf.com that is the world's premier collection of validated, authoritative fire and fire related information and contains two major collections in 15 Databases. For those individuals and organisations that do not subscribe to a range of journals/magazines this is one way of ensuring that the latest news, developments and trends are available.
The 5 Full Text Collection databases containing thousands of pages of full text information (about 12,000 pages added in 2007) and The Bibliographic Collection has 7 databases which contain over 267,000 records to journal articles, guidance and advice, circulars, reports, conference proceedings, research reports, statistics and codes of practice from worldwide sources, all of which may be easily accessed. One of the databases - from the British Standards Institution - contains references to over 4000 fire and fire related standards.
This long established collection started in 1997 as Fire Worldwide and then expanded into Fire, Emergency and Preparedness Worldwide. From 2007 the collection continues to expand with the new software and host platform as Fireinf and aims to help all those seeking information on all aspects of fire, emergency and preparedness management principles, fire risk assessment, good practices and research.
Fireinf is continuously enlarged as new information is published.
Why not try OSH UPDATE and FIREINF for yourself? Take a 15 day free trial to these collection!
Contact: Sheila Pantry Associates Ltd | Tel: +44 (0) 1909 771024 | Fax: +44 (0) 1909 772829 | email: sp@sheilapantry.com | or fill in the Interest form www.sheilapantry.com/interest.html
OSHWORLD - your portal to some of the best OSH web sites in the world
It is always good to review health, safety, chemical, fire and environment procedures on a regular basis. It is also important that the practices and systems in the workplace are constantly reviewed and if necessary, improved. This review may also indicate training requirements and updates and re-thinking how systems and services can be improved. This is where the free-of charge OSHWORLD can help you. Look at the latest additions to the Diary of Events and you will see plans have been made already worldwide up to the end of 2008 and beyond to have training courses, symposiums and conferences in many places in the world on a wide range of subjects.
Remember that even if you cannot attend these many events, speakers and organisers are often willing to share their knowledge. Look at the details - where possible, we add in the web sites of these events so you can request further information. And do let me know if you are organising any OSHE events so that I can add them to the Diary.
OSHWORLD's FOCUS this month looks at the FIREINF - the fire information collection that has just added 3 more databases. FIREINF is the world's premier collection of fire information that is focused and affordable and just gets better and better.
Try these Practical, Affordable Solutions for your health, safety, fire and environment information needs from Sheila Pantry Associates Ltd.
In addition to the above we hope that you find the information in OSHWORLD useful in your daily work. Globally there are continually new titles, news items, new products so remember to look at the News to find the latest information from a number of worldwide sources.
Use OSHWORLD as your portal to many hundreds of validated and authoritative web sites which you can find in the Country and Subject links we offer. New subject topics are constantly brought together on web sites, e.g. avian flu and the workplace.
Most information services have a reference shelf where you can quickly check the reference sources - so OSHWORLD brings you a collection of Reference sources and also teaches you how to Search the Internet.
Click onto the various Bookshops to order any new document as they are being published. Many of these Bookshops have a constant stream of new titles available.
Please send any suggestions or comments about OSHWORLD - your portal to validated and authoritative information. Remember also to look at our other really useful sites - www.sheilapantry.com and why not make a free entry about your company's products in www.shebuyersguide.com.
Don't work harder - work smarter! Be ahead of the game.
Well did you have a zero accident, incident-free and healthy year in 2007 in your workplace? Some would argue that this is not possible! But keep on trying again in 2008!