The Environmental Services Association (ESA) has urged people working across the UK’s recycling and waste management sector to participate in a short online survey to provide a “temperature check” on the health of the sector’s health and safety culture.
The H&S Culture Survey is being run independently, on ESA’s behalf, by SNAP surveys and asks respondents to anonymously answer just nine simple multiple-choice questions based on statements about the sector’s culture of health and safety.
The purpose of the survey is to understand how those working across the industry (or who are closely associated with it), regardless of role, perceive the industry’s approach to this important topic.
The short survey has been designed to be completed in a few minutes on a desktop or smartphone. The questions cover areas such as whether people feel safe at work or when visiting a site; or feel confident that there is a system in place to report incidents and that these are investigated.
We hope the survey results will provide a useful snapshot of perceptions about the industry’s H&S performance and will provide a useful basis for developing leading indicators on safety culture…
The survey can be accessed here and is open to all organisations. Additional information about the survey can be found here on the ESA’s website, including tools people can download to promote the survey within their organisation.
The survey, which has been live since July, is due to close on Friday 30 September – with over 1,000 respondents to date from across the sector.
The ESA aims for the survey to represent the views of as broad a cross section as possible across the sector and will publicly share the results in due course – which is anticipated in October.
ESA health and safety policy advisor, Stephen Freeland, said: “Raising operational standards across the sector is a strategic priority for the ESA and, in particular, our members are absolutely committed to keeping workplaces in the waste and recycling industry safe – striving to minimise the risk to all those associated with our operations.
“This has long been a priority issue for the ESA and we have had a dedicated H&S committee in place for over 30 years now, helping to share best practice and drive improvements across the industry.
“We hope the survey results will provide a useful snapshot of perceptions about the industry’s H&S performance and will provide a useful basis for developing leading indicators on safety culture to complement traditional “hard” injury reduction targets with a blend of more responsive performance measures.”
