With both workplace deaths and health and safety prosecutions on the rise here in the UK, it appears that Britain's businesses need all the help they can get when it comes to protecting their workers and staying on the right side of the regulations. With that in mind, we should all welcome the announcement that global law firm Clyde & Co have launched a new app - named ClydeCovered - that aims to make workplace safety incidents a little easier to manage.

The ClydeCovered app is free to download, and in the firm's own words, it is "designed to take the guesswork out of whether a workplace incident is notifiable or not...and what steps an individual or business should take following an incident". More specifically, the app allows you to:

• Find out what jurisdiction you are in and who the local health and safety regulator is (e.g. the HSE in Scotland, England and Wales, and the HSENI in Northern Ireland)
  
  
• Identify whether or not an incident needs to be reported to the relevant regulator
  
  
• Create an incident report that can be saved and sent via email
  
  
• Take immediate action (e.g. first aid) in the event of a serious incident
  
  
•  Contact Clyde & Co's emergency response team

At time of writing, the app only covers incidents in Singapore, Australia and New Zealand, but Clyde & Co have said that they will be rolling it out "globally" over the next few months. This hopefully means that UK businesses will soon be able to download the app and benefit from its capabilities in the event of a workplace incident.

Of course, while the ClydeCovered app sounds like the perfect tool to have at your disposal in a health and safety emergency, one thing it can't help you to do is stop incidents from occurring in the first place. As American Founding Father Benjamin Franklin once said, "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure", and it's better for everyone if you work hard to prevent incidents rather than relying on an app to see you through when something happens.

Preventing workplace incidents:

• Carry out a full risk assessment of your working environment
   
• Take any necessary measures to minimise risk (e.g. using safety labels and signs to warn of hazards)
   
• Remain vigilant and carry out regular re-assessments to ensure that no new risks have arisen

For more health and safety news/insight, be sure to follow @LabelSourceUK on Twitter!

We often talk about health and safety horror stories on this blog, and the health and safety horror story of the past year has without a doubt been the fallout from the rollercoaster crash at Alton Towers last summer.

In case you've somehow missed the media's coverage of this horrible accident, here's a brief recap: on the 2nd of June, 2015, a carriage carrying 16 people crashed into another (empty) carriage on a rollercoaster called The Smiler at the Alton Towers theme park in Staffordshire. Five people were seriously injured, and two of them - Vicky Balch and Leah Washington - ended up losing a leg each. Merlin Entertainments, the company that owns and operates the Alton Towers park, was investigated and taken to court over the incident, and last week a judge at Stafford crown court ordered them to pay a fine of £5 million.

There really are no winners here: Alton Towers have lost a lot of business in addition to the huge fine, and two young women were forced to undergo life-changing amputations that no amount of compensation will undo. However, a slender silver lining may be found in the possibility that this horrific incident and the ensuing media attention and court ruling may serve as a stern warning to other businesses (as well as to Merlin Entertainments themselves going forward). Paul Paxton, the lawyer who represented Balch and Washington in court, put it well in a statement outside the court after the judge's verdict had been delivered:

"My clients...have been shocked and disappointed by [Merlin's] catalogue of errors.The list goes on and on: the catastrophic failure to assess risk, the inadequate training, inadequate supervision, inadequate management, failure to communicate, failure to put in place safe systems of work. But this has not been about retribution; this has been about finding out why this accident happened and making sure that lessons have been learned, not just by Merlin but by others throughout the industry."

With that in mind, here's what businesses of all sizes in all sectors can learn from this case:

1. The Value of Risk Assessments

The judge at Stafford crown court ruled that Merlin's aforementioned "catastrophic failure to assess risk" was largely to blame for the Smiler incident. Risk assessments are important in every line of work; whether your workers are maintaining rollercoasters or moving boxes, you as a business owner are legally required to carry out a thorough risk assessment in order to identify any and all health and safety hazards that may exist in the working environment you're providing.

2. Putting in Place Safe Systems of Work

Spotting potential risks is just the first step towards total safety. After you've completed your risk assessment, you need to compose and implement a safe system of work that's designed to prevent accidents and injuries from occurring.

3. The Importance of Safety Training

Once you've identified possible risks and put a system in place to neutralise them, it's crucial that you train your staff to work within that system. It's all well and good coming up with a plan to minimise safety risks, but it won't help anyone unless the people on the ground are trained to put it into action!

Follow Label Source on Twitter for more health and safety news and insight!

A few days ago it emerged that G4S Cash Solutions has been fined £1.8 million for failing to protect its workers from legionnaires' disease. Harlow Council took action in October 2013, following reports that a worker had contracted the serious lung infection which causes flu-like symptoms.

Town Hall's environmental health officers were unable to prove that the Harlow worker had contracted the disease through the site. However, searches uncovered that there was a serious lack of compliance in maintaining water systems at the workplace.

Harlow Council began prosecution proceedings and G4S pled guilty to two charges under the 1974 Health and Safety at Work Act on June 20. At their sentencing the court judge fined the company and the company have told the court that they have taken a number of measures to improve the health and safety of their site. 

The bacterial infection Legionella is one of the main risks of contamination in engineering water systems. The most severe cases are from Legionnaires disease, which can lead to Pneumonia, and other secondary infections, which could lead to death. The infection flourishes in temperatures of between 25°C and 45°C, particularly, if an abundance of nutrients such as sludge, sediment or rust in the water systems and it affects a range of structures such as air condition systems, cooling towers, hot and cold water systems and many more. 

It is vitally important that an assessment should be undertaken to prevent and control the risk of a legionella outbreak. This can involve monitoring, inspecting, cleaning, disinfecting, flushing and sampling.

Label Source has supplied various labels to water system inspection companies and UKAS test laboratories to identify monitoring points, decontamination actions, safety procedures and inspection records. For further information on what custom printed labels, sign and tags we could offer you, contact us by email (sales@labelsource.co.uk) or by telephone(0800 3761693 in UK or +44 1443 842769 if you're outside the UK).

It's the final day of Health and Safety Week today, and with the focus being  "Inspiring excellence in the profession" we thought we'd provide you with a last minute suggestion on how you can boost health and safety engagement in your workplace.

There are a number of ways to improve health and safety engagement, from rewarding workers for their initiative, organising a health and safety presentation to be delivered by your employees or including your staff when you're carrying out health and safety measures, but one of our favourite methods is a good, old, classic quiz. There are bound to be plenty of safety signs and hazard notices placed all over your workplace, but do the workers using these premises actually take note of them and understand what they mean? To find out, you can organise a quiz which includes all the signs and notices in the building - for each correct symbol, the employee gains a point. To encourage your employees to scrub up on their health and safety knowledge even more, you could provide the top-scoring employee with a prize!

To give you a rough idea of what your quizzes should look like, we've taken it upon ourselves to get the ball rolling and provide you with an example below. Set your employees weekly tests to do and in no time they'll be health and safety experts!

What do these symbols mean?

1) We'll start you off easy! Click here to find out if you're correct. 

2) This symbol is everywhere! Answer here. 

3) Come on, you've got to get this one! Answer here. 

4) We're stepping it up a notch! Click here to see if you're right.

5) Not sure on this one? Click here for the answer!

6) We'll give you a clue, it has nothing to do with snowmen! Answer here.

7) What do these wavy lines mean? Find out here. 

8) What does this skull tell you? Click here to find out! 

9) Everyone should recognise this! Click here to find out the answer.

10) This one certainly stands out! To find out the answer click here.

This week is Health & Safety Week throughout the UK, and as you can probably imagine, we at Label Source will be watching the conversation surrounding this event with great interest as the week unfolds. According to SHP Online, the focus for Health & Safety Week 2016 is 'inspiring excellence in the profession', specifically by recognising the people who strive to achieve excellent H&S standards within their organisations.

Of course, providing a safe working environment is the responsibility of the employer first and foremost, but this does not mean that workers should not be encouraged to contribute to health and safety culture within the company. Here are some suggestions for improving company-wide engagement with health and safety practices:

• Reward workers for their initiative. The 'Employee of the Month' award is a common motivational gimmick, but instead of simply handing out a monthly award to the person who did the best (a nebulous standard if ever there was one), why not recognise and reward workers specifically for their ongoing contributions to health and safety? You could even offer a monthly prize (e.g. a gift voucher) to encourage workers to constantly be on the lookout for opportunities to improve workplace safety.
  
  
• Organise a health and safety presentation (to be delivered by your employees). Lecturing your workers on health and safety protocol tends to be a tedious experience for all involved, so why not flip the script and encourage a group of employees to put together an informal presentation based on their own research and ideas? This is a good way to get your employees thinking more carefully about H&S measures and how they are deployed throughout the company, and talented staff members will be able to deliver a presentation that gets the whole team interested too!
  
  
• Include your staff when carrying out/renewing regular health and safety measures. Excluding those who are directly involved in the running of the company, most employees don't think about H&S very often because it's not part of their job. The resulting apathy towards H&S can be countered by getting workers involved in the day-to-day management of the company's health and safety system - possible examples include asking employees to order any new safety labels that may be required, enlisting them to help with informal risk assessments, or even just regularly reminding them of established protocol (e.g. via fire drills and refresher training).
  
  
• Quiz your employees! There are probably safety signs and hazard notices dotted all over your workplace, but do the people who use the premises on a daily basis actually know what everything means? To find out, organise a quiz like this one - offer a prize for perfect scores, and give everyone time to revise and brush up their knowledge beforehand!

Be sure to follow Label Source on Twitter for more health and safety insight and conversation during Health & Safety Week (as well as all year round!)