Around 39 million working days were lost between 2003 and 2004, according to the Health and Safety Executive. Thirty million of those were due to work-related ill health and nine million due to workplace injury.
Now the University of Aberdeen is giving companies the chance to bolster their health and safety expertise in a series of key areas via a forum that will bring together a wide range of University experts.
In the latest in a series of Doing Business seminars supported by Scottish Enterprise Grampian, the event which takes place at the University at 5.45pm on May 4, will provide information and advice in three key areas.
Leading researchers and academics from University will discuss health and safety from the environmental and occupational medicine perspective; from an organisational and psychological perspective; as well as from a range of legal standpoints.
At any one time 550,000 employees have work-related back-pain or some other musculo-skeletal problem. A total of 110,000 suffer work related stress and 60,000 have occupational lung disease. The effect on manufacturing capacity as well as the quality of life for workers is substantial.
The University’s Department of Environmental and Occupational Medicine is one of only three truly multi-disciplinary academic departments of occupational and environmental medicine in the UK and is able to advise employers on these issues, as well as research causes and approaches to improve the situation.
Professor Jon Ayres heads the department, acts as an adviser to Government, and is also a member of a number of influential committees. One of the speakers at the Doing Business seminar, Professor Ayres said: “Our department is also heavily involved in environmental research, notably in the field of air pollution and exposure to pesticide residues in ground water.
“The long term effects of exposure to airborne or ingested pollutants and chemicals in contributing to disease burden is becoming more urgent and the capability to understand these effects is expanding rapidly.
“In both the occupational and environmental setting, our approach is to understand the exposure, in other words the hazard, work out the risk and produce ways of reducing exposure by means of controlling it maybe through policy development, either local, regional or national.
“We are happy to offer advice to any company who might benefit in this field.”
The Industrial Psychology Research Centre (IPRC) at the University has been specialising in the management of health and safety in high reliability organisations since 1987.
The IPRC has expanded under the directorship of Professor Rhona Flin and Dr Kathryn Mearns, and now consists of six staff and 11 postgraduate students.
Professor Flin is one of the country's leading industrial psychologists. Her particular interests are in senior management influence on safety, decision making under pressure, and non-technical skills in pilots and anaesthetists. She has published extensively on industrial safety management and crisis management
The IPRC has experience of research and consultancy in the oil and gas industry, nuclear and conventional power generation, civil aviation, the emergency services and hospital medicine.
At the Doing Business seminar, Dr Mearns will be presenting details of recent research projects that the IPRC has had involvement. These include a study of health and well-being among offshore workers; studies of safety climate in organisations and a study of teams and decision making in control rooms.
Dr Mearns said: ‘We are delighted to be able to showcase our services to a different user group than we have traditionally been associated with. I hope the SME representatives at the event will appreciate the benefits that psychology can bring to their organisations.”
Information on the latest legal moves regarding corporate manslaughter will be among the areas that can be advised upon by a team of legal experts led by Dr John Paterson, a reader in law who is author of a book on the evolution of Health and Safety at Work regulations in the offshore industry.
He also acts as a consultant for international organisations on risk and governance issues and is involved in international research projects on risk regulation.
Dr Paterson added: “Staff from the Law School with expertise in Health and Safety at Work, especially as it affects the offshore industry, are looking forward to meeting representatives from the business community to see whether there are areas where we can be of assistance.”
The Doing Business seminar is aimed at health and safety officers and managers and takes place at the Institute of Medical Sciences building, Foresterhill.
To book a place call Angela Park on (01224) 272484 or email a.park@abdn.ac.uk.