Last week, I wrote that workplace health was starting to catch up with safety. This week, the regulator made the point for me.
The Health Service Executive has issued its first-ever Prohibition Notice against an occupational health provider.
A Prohibition Notice is a serious one. It means stop, now, because the risk of serious harm is real and immediate. The failing? Inadequate health surveillance. The people meant to be protecting workers' health were not doing the job.
Read that again. The enforcement action was about health, not a fall or a machine.
For years, "health and safety" has quietly meant "safety." Health was the softer half. Slower to show up, easier to defer, rarely the thing an inspector turned up about.
That is changing. The HSE has been clear that it will treat the things that damage people's health, physical and psychological, with the same seriousness as the things that injure them on the day. The House of Lords principles are pointed here. This notice is the first hard edge of it.
So the question for leaders is simple. If an inspector looked at how you manage health, not just safety, would you be comfortable with what they found?
#HealthAndSafety #Leadership #OccupationalHealth #HSE