Survey suggests that 60% of employees don’t fully adhere to health and safety practices

Health and safety is a crucial component of every single workplace. Or, at least, it should be. Recent studies have shown that as much as 60% of employees don’t fully adhere to the health and safety rules and regulations in their workplace, and 33% don’t think their workplace has any health and safety rules whatsoever.

A number of key issues became apparent as a result of the survey by safety barrier manufacturer, A-SAFE. These included:

• 70% of participants thought that the ‘flammable’ symbol meant ‘naked flame’
• 54% thought the symbol prompting the wearing of safety harnesses meant ‘beware of overhead workers’
• 55% thought that the ‘drop’ symbol had been incorrectly labelled, when it was actually correct
• 64% didn’t know that green signs signal an emergency
• 11% would feel ‘very confident’ that their colleagues would react in the appropriate way if they received an injury at work
• 24% understood that mental health issues, such as depression affect one in six employees

Of the different sectors that took part in the survey, retail and distribution workers displayed the best knowledge of health and safety procedures, with 60% of them correctly identifying all employer responsibilities. Conversely, only 42% of surveyed automobile industry workers could identify said responsibilities correctly.

Men and women had similar results when they were quizzed on the meanings of health and safety symbols, but when asked if they know and adhere to all relevant safety practices, 52% of men said they did, compared to 32% of women.

James Smith, Co-owner of A-SAFE, said: “Health and safety is a huge priority for any business, regardless of size. Small hazards which are ignored can easily become a major incident resulting in injury, death and significant damage to a business’s reputation and finances. “We wanted to identify the knowledge black spots across various industries, to help employers fill in any gaps and ensure health and safety is a priority for all team members in the New Year.”

At Health & Safety Training UK Ltd, we are proud to be the leading provider of health and safety courses and training in the North East. With a huge variety of accredited courses across a number of practices and disciplines, we are the ideal people to help you learn new skills, consolidate existing ones or refresh ones you may not have used in a while. For more information, please get in touch with us today and we’ll be more than happy to help you.