Why the blog?
Let’s be honest, health and safety comes in for a lot of stick in the UK. “It’s elf and safety gone mad, isn’t it?” say some. Others decry health and safety as something that stops people doing things. Some wave dog-eared copies of their favourite tabloid around citing stories of school kids forced to wear goggles for a game of conkers. Most of it is nonsense. Health and safety hasn’t ’gone mad’ and neither does it stop people doing things.
What are its aims?
This blog aims to change the perceptions of health and safety and challenge the often fictional stories some newspapers print in order to use health and safety as a means to stir up resentment with their readers. We also want to reach out to those who have a negative view of the profession and hopefully make them see the value of good health and safety.
How are we going to do it?
We’ll
- use our journalistic experience to challenge the media and the way they report on health and safety. Most of the time, stories about health and safety have either been poorly researched or have little or nothing to do with health and safety
- ask our 39,500 members worldwide to engage with what we’re doing and share our blogs across the social media tools they use
- talk to politicians, both local and national, to show how good health and safety can help boost the UK economy, rather than hinder it
- demonstrate that good health and safety can empower people to do things, not stop them
- use thought-provoking blogs on all aspects of health and safety to engage with people on a level that’s neither preachy nor patronising
- use humour and a little mix of personal opinion to show that health and safety isn’t a stuffy profession full of tabard-wearing, clipboard-clutching people called Keith.*
What we won’t do is
- show our own personal political beliefs and opinions
- be disrespectful to those who don’t share our thoughts on health and safety
- tolerate any blog comments that contain foul or malicious language, nor will we respond to every blog posting.
And finally...
Thanks for taking the time to read this introduction and our blog. Don’t be a stranger and get in touch with us if you have a suggestion. We’re always on the other end of a keyboard.
Thanks.
IOSH media team.
*Any reference to Keith, real or fictional, is purely coincidental.
