After recently attending a business development seminar I walked away knowing there are certain aspects of business that I am not so comfortable with; however, to achieve success these are issues that must be addressed.  Clearly, some of these issues will require much thought on my part and some will require specialist help from outside the business.

This makes me ask the question to you: “what parts of your business are outside of your comfort zone?”  Is health & safety one of those areas or are you confident that you have the safety of your business well covered?

It’s strange that with many of the cases where businesses have fallen foul of the law, the businesses are often quoted as saying they had a perfect health & safety record before whatever went wrong. It appears to us that it was most likely that these businesses had failed to look closely at what was going on and had therefore assumed all was alright. A bold quote on our part you may think; but in reality it’s just based on years of experience of working with hundreds of businesses throughout the UK.

It’s a fact that for many people/businesses, they only address the issues outside their comfort zone when they are forced into it; maybe because of an accident or ill-health or perhaps because the business is in trouble financially, or because someone is asking awkward questions that cannot be easily answered.

We see this most weeks when businesses around the country contact us, asking to quote for DSEAR assessment support.  For many of these businesses it’s because either the HSE or their insurer has suggested this is required.

Whatever the reason it’s when “we” are pushed into a corner that we have to face up to the issues we had been avoiding for so long.  As we have alluded to in recent blogs, leaving health & safety issues until we are pushed into such a corner really could prove costly to you and your business in future (see our posts on FFI charges).

As stated, we know we ourselves have some areas outside of our comfort zone but that will help to make our business even stronger … why not look closely at your business rather than wait to be pushed into a corner?