Editorial
Did you have a successful 2008?
Sheila Pantry OBE
December 2008
May we wish you the Season's Greeting wherever you are in the World!
Despite these turbulent times, this is a good time of the year for all organisations to review their health, safety, chemical, fire and environment procedures. Security should be part of this review. The results should give some valuable guidelines also when drawing up the Business Continuity Plans to ensure that the business and the most important part - the people working in it, are kept safe and secure, not only in their health but in their jobs.
One topic keeps continually being discussed is on managing attendance and return to work that includes aggression and violence in the workplace. Have you checked recently to see if absenteeism in your workplace is connected to aggression, bullying and workplace violence?
This month's OSHWORLD FOCUS looks at the rehabilitation of workers and draws attention to the aim of the UK Institution of Occupational Safety and Health new guide A healthy return - good practice guide to rehabilitating people at work. This guide gives occupational safety and health practitioners a grounding in rehabilitation, and to provide them with practical support. Others, including managers and human resources personnel, will also find it useful.
Another area to watch is to ensure that you are up-to-date in your wider health and safety information. Remember ignorance of the law and its requirements is NO excuse. So do you want to keep up-to-date in worldwide occupational health, safety, hygiene, road safety, water safety, environment trends and the latest information? Do budget constraints not allow you to buy all the journals, newsletters and documents that contain the latest information? Can't afford the time to search for the latest information, legislation and standards? No staff to search for this information? And no time yourself to spend hours searching for information?
Then try these Practical, Affordable Solutions for your health, safety, fire and environment information needs from Sheila Pantry Associates Ltd:
OSH UPDATE - are you using it? If not, why not?
It is always good to keep researching and finding out if there are services and other ways of keeping up-to-date in this fast changing world of ours. Time is precious and many people are really stretched in their jobs and find it difficult to keep ahead in current knowledge that they should have for their jobs. But help is at hand for those working in health, safety and fire and fire related industries.
FIREINF www.fireinf.com is the world's premier collection of validated, authoritative fire and fire related information. It contains 16 databases and over 523,000 records and covers two major collections.
FIREINF Full Text Collection databases containing thousands of pages of full text information and The Bibliographic Collection has databases contain 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 database from the British Standards Institution BSI - contains references to over 4300 fire and fire related standards and another BSI database contains references to security related standards.
This long established collection started in 1997 as Fire Worldwide and over the years has been rapidly expanding. From 2007 the collection continued 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 and is used by organisations worldwide.
For a 15 DAY FREE NO OBLIGATION TRIAL contact: Sheila Pantry Associates Ltd | email: sp@sheilapantry.com | or fill in the Interest form www.sheilapantry.com/interest.html
OSH UPDATE - are you using it? If not, why not?
Or you may be missing OSH-ROM... is so, then try OSH UPDATE
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. Best practices, case studies, journal articles, reports and knowledge of systems are in OSH UPDATE.
OSH UPDATE is CONTINUOUSLY expanding and has 19 databases.
Why not try OSH UPDATE for yourself? Take a 15 day free trial to a collection of over 800,000 sources of authoritative and validated information.
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.
In these days of tighter budgets perhaps training may be put on the "back-burner" - but think again how you can keep up with the latest techniques and training opportunities. So 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 2010 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.
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 that 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 2008 in your workplace? Some would argue that this is not possible! But keep on trying again in 2009!
And do start to make plans for your campaigns for 2009!