Editorial
World’s largest occupational safety and health campaign closes following a record level of involvement
November 2013
Sheila Pantry OBE
The European Agency for Safety and Health at Work (EU-OSHA) has brought its campaign on ‘Working together for risk prevention’ to a close at a major conference held in Bilbao on 11 and 12 November 2013.
The two-day Healthy Workplaces Summit brought together leading occupational safety and health (OSH) professionals for networking and discussion, enabling the exchange of good practice and the development of future strategies.
Dr Christa Sedlatschek, Director of EU-OSHA, said: ‘The Healthy Workplaces campaigns have proven once again to be one of the most successful and effective ways of promoting good OSH at a grass-roots level. We are delighted that so many companies and organisations across Europe took part in this risk prevention campaign – they all understand and appreciate the huge contribution that OSH can make to improving working conditions.’
Representatives of the European Commission attended, together with representatives from the EU Presidency, EU social partners, and national and local government who have backed the campaign.
Together with EU-OSHA’s Europe-wide network of focal points, a record number of official campaign partners – 87 companies and organisations – took part in the campaign, which has been running since April 2012 and has encouraged employees and managers to work together to manage risks in the workplace.
The winners of the European Good Practice Awards – ten organisations recognised for their outstanding collaboration between workers and managers in risk prevention – were also present, representing sectors such as agriculture, health care and manufacturing.
Use the best information sources
Information on health, safety and fire – not only from Europe but from around the World, including advice, guidance, research results, case studies, journal articles and legislation and much more can be found by checking out the OSH UPDATE + FIRE electronic collection of information sources.
OSH UPDATE + FIRE www.oshupdate.com is CONTINUOUSLY expanding as new information is published and has 26 databases containing 1,109,610 full text and bibliographic records. It is a unique collection of authoritative and validated information from major sources that has been available for many years and continues to bring you the latest information on health, safety, environment, fire and other subjects that you will find useful in your daily work.
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FOCUS
This month’s FOCUS is an appreciation of Professor Trevor Kletz and his work that impacts daily on the world of work. We mourned his death.
Worldwide, plans have been made already up to 2015 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 OSHWORLD 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.
One way of keeping up to date is to go to exhibitions and the world’s major OSHE events. 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, I 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 and fire events so that I can add them to the Diary send to sp@sheilapantry.com
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 find the right course, seminar or conference.
Your OSHWorld Portal
Globally there are new publications, news items, new products so remember to look at the News section to find the latest information from an ever increasing number of sources such as the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work to the US National Institute for Occupational safety and Health (NIOSH). 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. the various OSH related networks that exist around the world... there may be one where you live and work... why not join it!
Remember to look at the Products and Services on this web site and see what is new and updated.
OSHWORLD www.oshworld.com – your portal to some of the very best OSH web sites in the world!
Also look at our www.shebuyersguide.com that give you access to many organisations, their products and services. You may also wish to add your company’s information to the listing for free!
You can sign up for the RSS feed that alerts you each time there is an update in OSHWORLD!
OSH UPDATE was described recently as a “brilliant site”!
Don’t work harder – work smarter! Be ahead of the game.
Are you hoping to have a zero accident, incident-free and healthy record this year in your workplace? Some would argue that this is not possible! But keep on trying!