Leveraging 60 years’ experience as a medical manufacturer and distributor with over 180 employees – we are celebrating World Health and Safety Day here at Pennine. As an EOT, we have a duty to our colleagues and customers – that we maintain a stringent Health and safety management system to keep everyone safe.
It is vital that we understand the significance of health and safety in our industry as 10% of workplace injuries occur in manufacturing facilities. We ensure that our people are supported by the latest Health and Safety best practice and have implemented protection measures, to reduce risk and comply with our values of Honesty, Accountability, and Continuous Improvement.
Russell King, our Health and Safety Executive, explains the importance of a positive Health and Safety culture in the workplace and his personal projects leading him to his role with Pennine…
What do you think attracted you to work within Health and Safety?
Fundamentally it was to help colleagues, to raise the bar on accepted working practices and just make a tangible difference. As they say, no one comes to work to get hurt and should be able to go home in the same health as they arrived, if not better.
What is your biggest achievement so far whilst you’ve been working with Pennine?
Standardising our approach and focusing on getting the fundamentals right, the management systems were in a healthy position, thus, more tweaks than wholesale change.
What do you think the biggest consideration is when referring to Health and Safety in the workplace?
Engaging colleagues is the only way to achieve a sustainable change, nothing ever imposed is embedded. I like to keep the approach relevant to the audience.
What do you enjoy most about your role?
Developing people along with systems, sharing my knowledge (opinion) and supporting change. Seeing people with an interest develop from operators in the factory, through IOSH, NEBOSH and become a H&S manager is very rewarding.
One of Russell’s biggest personal achievements will be experienced here at Pennine over the coming weeks, as later in the year, we will be celebrating 4 years of no days lost to accidents (LTA). This is an amazing achievement that we are delighted to be sharing.
Stay tuned for more updates and how we will be honoring this accomplishment…
