Editorial
Looking forward - working together: a new strategy for health and safety
Sheila Pantry OBE
June 2009
A new strategy for health and safety is being launched for the UK on 3 June 2009.
The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) will launch its new strategy "Be Part of the Solution". The strategy will explain that for Great Britain's health and safety record to improve, everyone in the workforce must act together to minimise risks while maintaining business competitiveness. In particular, business leaders will need to ensure that in difficult economic times corners are not cut, resulting in death and serious injuries to workers.
HSE is also undertaking research into attitudes towards workplace safety and people's perceptions of risk. The results are expected to be surprising and will be published with the new strategy.
Last month's OSHWORLD's Editorial was on the topic of Working with the Future and a request not to let the current economic climate interfere in ensuring that good health and safety standards in the workplaces are maintained. In other words "Don't let health and safety slip of the agenda"!
This month's OSHWORLD FOCUS is on the CIS, the International Labour Office (ILO) worldwide network of some 154 health and safety information centres that is celebrating its 50 years anniversary. Anyone working in information, particularly in occupational safety and health (OSH) information will know the endeavours and achievements that have been made by harnessing the emerging technologies over the last few decades and bringing validated and authoritative OSH information to workers and managers alike.
OSHWORLD continues to bring you information on health, safety, environment, fire and other subjects that I hope you find useful in your daily work.
Worldwide, plans have been made already up to 2010 to have training courses, symposiums and conferences in many places in the world on a wide range of subjects. Look at the latest additions to the Diary of Events. Don't forget to budget for these events - make sure that you and your colleagues are up-to-date with the very latest knowledge - remember that all workplaces and those working in them change, so continue to do your risk assessments.
Your OSHWorld Portal
Globally new titles, news items, new products are being produced so remember to look at the News to find the latest information from a number of 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. swine flu.
Most information services have a reference shelf where you can quickly check the reference sources - so OSHWORLD brings you a collection of Reference sources.
Click onto the various Bookshops to order any new document as they are being published. Bookshops have a constant stream of new titles available.
Please send any suggestions or comments about OSHWORLD - your portal to validated and authoritative information.
Keeping up-to-date in OSH and fire information despite the turbulent times...
So do you want to keep up-to-date in worldwide occupational health, safety, hygiene, road safety, water safety, environment trends and fire 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?
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 now contains 17 databases and over 527,000 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? If you are missing OSH-ROM - 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.
As two information experts have said today - "wonderful, easy to use database collections of full text documents and bibliographic records that are unique and are constantly evolving."
Why not try OSH UPDATE for yourself? Take a 15 day free NO OBLIGATION trial to a collection of over 800,000 sources of authoritative and validated information.
Contact: Sheila Pantry Associates Ltd | Email: sp@sheilapantry.com | or fill in the Interest form www.sheilapantry.com/interest.html
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 continue to make plans for your campaigns for 2009 and beyond!