I haven’t spoken to Peter for quite some time, but he is one of those people that it doesn’t seem to matter. He is warm and friendly, and it the time disappears.

Peter is retired now, but previously had a long and successful career in health, safety and environment in a large multinational. He came from an era before the ISO standards revolution, and watched it happen. His thoughts on this subject? He prefers to do things, rather than write about them….how many of us can relate to that thought?

I am currently talking to people about ways in which the Proactively product could help make their life better. I ask Peter about a list of common problems that Compliance Managers face today. It is a conversation I have had with many companies, and I think I know what he is going to say.

I ask him to rank what I feel are 4 significant problems. You may have a different list (and I would be interested to hear what that is), but for today it is:

Do you find

much of your time is taken up with admin, rather than making a difference People commit to an action, but then don’t do it It is difficult to get employees interested in the ISO systems It is difficult to sell the idea of HSEQ to senior managers and get the resources needed But what a surprise, Peter doesn’t relate to any of the problems! These are not issues that he had. How can that be?

I used to work with Peter, and delivered an enormous amount of safety training for him. He wanted everyone in the organisation to go through the appropriate IOSH course: Managing Safely, Senior Execs etc. You can imagine this was a huge investment in money and time, and not popular with everyone. But the outcome is that everyone in the organisation has a good understanding of why H&S is important, and a reasonable idea of what to do about it. They can take responsibility. They integrate H&S into their work activities. They have taken a big step towards what it the holy grail for so many companies an ‘effective safety culture’

It brought home to me that if you want to be a company where everyone believes and acts as though safety is everyone’s responsibility, training is vital part of this. It is the foundation.