Seemingly trivial things that annoy you

I had to do an H&S training course and certification for a mining company back a lot of years (at their expense, thankfully). Turned up wearing the high vis vest I'd been issued with by my previous client, who were also vaguely associated with the same industry. It was the typical fluoro yellow thing with reflective strips vertically over each shoulder and a couple of wider bands round the torso.

During the course, we covered PPE, with particular emphasis on the high vis clothing requirements. The instructor pointed me out as an example of what was NOT permitted on their work sites.

Apparently someone had determined that the reflective material stripe over the shoulders had been causing excessive sunburn on the earlobes of the people wearing it. This was a cause of Lost Time Due To Injury that was causing a problem for their Site Safety Metrics.

I am not making this up.

Further, he said it was also therefore not acceptable to wear EVEN INDOORS IN THE SITE OFFICES.

Nor would we want to be with this sort of shyte comply with.

Are we liable for people breaking the law when driving for work, in their private vehicles?

No.

What should we do?

Get everyone to sign something to say they will do what they are legally obliged to do anyway.

Will that help the company?

No, not one bit.

Okay. Go ahead then.

Saw that. Hopelly his community service includes litter collection by a busy road.

Fuuuuuuck me, did the sense of humour amputation hurt?

But taking up your earnest lecture for a moment, you seem to be supposing that these courses have some sort of effect on how people sit down. This is different from making footrests, ergonomic mice etc available, or even letting people know that they are available.

Similarly, is signing something to confirm what I must already do going to have any material bearing on whether or not I do it? Or am I going to break the speed limit either way?

It is arse covering box ticking, plain and simple. If you think otherwise, the hypnotist didn't let you back into the room that time.

Therein lies the problem though. There are lots of employers whose response to the red tape is to just get their staff to do a load of tick box online courses with tests at the end so that they can also tick a box to say they've fulfilled their responsibility. It would be far better if they produced their own in-house induction covering risks specific to their own organisation but that costs time and money. Some tick box course covering the usual manual handling, working from heights, COSHH etc. isn't that relevant to office workers who occasionally have to go on-site to undertake a traffic survey or take some measurements.

One of my responsibilities in a previous company was to update all the H&S stuff, the policy that some supposedly specialist H&S consultant had put together and it was just pages of irrelevant, generic stuff that was obviously copied and pasted. In terms of the Display Screen Regulations I got everyone to completed the HSE checklist and they had to sign to confirm they had read and understood the information on the website. The checklist needed to be done for any home / remote working and they also had to send a photo of their setup before being allowed to work remotely. If they needed anything to be able to set up in accordance with the guidance in the Regulations the onus was on them to advise me and it would be arranged for them. We could have forked out for them to complete much the same assessment online with a multiple choice quiz at the end that they could complete as many times as needed to get their self-print certificate but that felt like a waste of money.

You would have achieved the same thing by getting people to confirm whether they were happy with their setup.

Put another way, how many times did you take that photo of someone's desk and (a) insist they change it because it was not safe or (b) compared it to what the desk setup looked like when it was actually being used.

My guess (a) Very few or none (b) None.

Next question. When did legislation last change significantly? Because for my entire working life there's been some "this is how you sit down" resource provided by employers, whereas now we do courses. If the legislation is basically the same, then the courses have just grown like a fungus into our working lives for no particularly good reason.

Exactly RJS. Check yourself, before you wreck yourself!

Once had a H&S "officer" whose whole role appeared to be trawling YT for an appropriate video to show at the weekly H&S presentation. Can't blame him for taking the role but management have to take responsibility.

That's a good start, but how will you fill the remaining 59 minutes of today's course?

Now look around the office. What percentage of people are maintaining that position for 55 minutes of every hour at work? The other 5 minutes are spent walking around, obs.

Yes, we had two people in the office during lockdown as they couldn't set up a suitable home working space. Now we just want people in the office because they benefit from it. Getting everyone (15 of us) set up properly in the office takes an hour or so in total once a year (a few minutes each). Perhaps if people took the subject seriously, fewer people would be fobbed off by 'service providers: stringing the work out.

Things are getting too bloody serious if you ask me. The world needs more levity and less self-consciousness.

I'm trying.

Starting with telling you to lighten up a bit. You must be a nightmare to work with.