Skip to main content

This link is exclusively for students and staff members within this organisation.

Unauthorised use will lead to account termination.

Previous

Failure: better than success?

Next

Architecture and business

human resources strategies

Health and safety

A killer question

Ian Marcousé explores three key issues around health and safety regulation

Ingram

According to the USA’s National Counterterrorism Centre, there were 12,533 terrorist murders in the world in 2011 (mainly in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan and Somalia). That same year there were between 300,000 and 2,200,000 work-related deaths around the world. Despite this extraordinary carnage, national governments hardly bother to collect the statistics.

On the face of it, health and safety is a deadly dull topic. So it is surprising that newspapers and politicians get so excited about the subject. They love tut-tutting at stupid, over-protective rules. Teachers find seven-page forms to be filled out when taking students on trips. Builders moan at having to erect expensive scaffolding instead of popping up a ladder. MPs queue up to complain in parliament about the dead hand of ‘elf ’n safety’ bureaucracy holding back our entrepreneurs. These statements are made in the context of a society that believes that health and safety is not a problem in today’s world.

Your organisation does not have access to this article.

Sign up today to give your students the edge they need to achieve their best grades with subject expertise

Subscribe

Previous

Failure: better than success?

Next

Architecture and business

Related articles: