How safe are your workers? How safe are you at work? Is your business prepared for a disruptive emergency?
These important questions and others were addressed at a Reliance Security Services conference in Exeter on November 7th examining safety in the workplace and business continuity.
Philip Lowe, a former Royal Marine and now an international security consultant, told delegates that there were 418,000-recorded threats of violence in the workplace, with 431,000 reports of actual physical assault, according to the latest British Crime Survey.
"Employers must give consideration to the risks that their staff undertake in the jobs that they do," Mr Lowe said, underlining both the personal and financial implications of such a move. Indeed, he said, employers are now required by law to provide a risk assessment, training and guidance for individual posts.
There was a definite and important cost issue to consider, Mr Lowe said. "Think of the bottom line here," he urged his audience, listing a raft of "costs" to an organisation through not considering the issues of employee personal safety. These included:
- Liability and litigation
- Wasted man-hours
- Lost productivity
- High staff turnover
- Low staff morale
- Financial costs
- Corporate reputation
He concluded: "Think ahead, plan, make a risk assessment and act on it."
For businesses themselves, forge closer contacts with your local authorities. That was the message from Richard Horne, Emergency Planning Manager for Devon County Council.
He described the network of different agencies and services responsible for responding to emergency situations that are now governed by legislation - a move prompted by a catalogue of disasters, from floods to terrorism, in recent years.
This situation has been radically changed by the introduction of the Civil Contingencies Act in 2004, which gave specific responsibilities to local authorities and other government agencies, as well as the emergency services.
Representative committees, based on Police Force areas across the country, with personnel drawn from across the spectrum of agencies that would be involved in a serious emergency, now hold mandatory meetings four times a year. Key responsibilities include forming a local risk profile, which in turn informs local emergency planning. Crucially, for the first time, local authorities have been given a formal role in co-ordinating any response during what is known as the Recovery Phase of a major incident.
It was important, Mr Horne stressed, for local authorities and the business community to build strong links in this regard. "Only through cooperation can we promote effective business continuity planning."
Final speaker, Keilson Foote, gave an insight into his role as Counter Terrorism Security Adviser (CTSA) to Devon and Cornwall Police. CTSAs provide free protective security advice to industries and sectors of public and private business based on identified threats, which include extremism.
There are some 140 CTSA's in England and Wales. They were established after 9/11 because of the perception that the security services and the police were not sharing information and were duplicating efforts in the fight against terrorism.
The CTSA will glean intelligence from both sides - police and security services - and decide how best to act on it. The officer advises on what actions should then be taken. Mr Foote gave the example of receiving intelligence about animal rights activists and then advising those companies at risk how they should respond.
"It's up to them then how they act," said Mr Foote. "But we are available as a resource to assist and advise in dealing with the threat."
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