Safety should be a higher priority for bosses
May 1, 2008
The Institution of Occupational Safety and Health (IOSH) has released the results of new research revealing that a large number of bosses put other business concerns ahead of worker safety, according to their staff.
The YouGov survey was commissioned by IOSH, Europe’s largest health and safety professional body.
When asked to rank their boss’s business priorities, 31% felt that keeping customers and clients happy was the top concern.
A further 26% believed getting work done on time was most important to their boss, while another 23% thought making money was the main goal of their employer.
Only 7% of respondents said that making sure employees are not hurt or made ill by their work was their boss’s main priority.
However, the survey did find that 56% of employees felt health and safety was important to their boss, although 14% felt it was not.
Furthermore, over two-thirds (67%) of employees surveyed said they felt health and safety either saved lives or meant people didn’t get ill or hurt at work and the majority did not think it was about "red tape, silly European laws or stopping people getting on with their lives".
Ray Hurst, President of IOSH, said, "These workers’ views suggest that there is still a minority of employers out there who simply don’t give a damn about their staff. There are some who still think it is okay to cut corners and put their staff at risk, and that’s not acceptable. While the vast majority of bosses do take health and safety seriously, workers feel some do not."
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