Help! Work has brought in their own safety policy on bike travel between sites

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simonineaston
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Re: Help! Work has brought in their own safety policy on bike travel between sites

Post by simonineaston »

It will be no help to the original poster, but I can't help but lament what a gloomy world we inhabit now, where everything is all about liability and performance targets. As populations and pressures grow, we tend to lose sight of each other as people.
having a break at work, with a ciggy
having a break at work, with a ciggy
S
(on the look out for Armageddon, on board a Brompton nano & ever-changing Moultons)
Pete Owens
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Re: Help! Work has brought in their own safety policy on bike travel between sites

Post by Pete Owens »

gbnz wrote: 18 May 2022, 9:33pm It isn't unreasonable to insist that employees travelling within work time, whilst undertaking work related activities comply with corporate health & safety measures.
Only if those policies are evidence based and applied universally rather than applying standard anti-cyclist victim blaming prejudices for which there is no evidence of effectiveness and singling out a minority group to apply them to.
Insisting that cycle paths and/or lanes, helmets, hi visibility garments etc, etc are used, is quite reasonable.
Do they insist that pedestrians wear any specific clothing? Perhaps a full face veil for females traveling between sites?
Do they require motorists to wear crash helmets?

Any reasonable safety policy for travel between sites should be based on a risk assessment. If this is done properly it would identify the use of motor vehicles as a serious hazard both to the user and the general public and the first control measure should always be to seek to eliminate any hazard. This means that the use of motor vehicles would be banned for any journey short enough to be cycled.
Nearholmer
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Re: Help! Work has brought in their own safety policy on bike travel between sites

Post by Nearholmer »

While you are at work, your employer has duties to care for your health and safety, so at the barest level: yes, they may be within their rights to make requirements about how you conduct yourself while cycling as part of your work.

Their requirements should be grounded in a “suitable and sufficient” risk assessment, and if there is a problem in what they are requiring, the root of it may be that their risk assessment wasn’t “suitable and sufficient”, which is particularly likely to be the case if it wasn’t undertaken by people who have a good understanding of the realities of cycling.

If you believe that what you are being required to do is unreasonable, step one should be to talk it over with your manager, advising your H&S representative, if you have one, in parallel. If that doesn’t result in mutual understanding, the routes of escalation depend a great deal on whether or not you are a TU member, and if so whether your TU is prepared to take the matter up on your behalf. You can, as an individual employee, raise matters direct with HSE, but it’s a time-consuming process, not for the faint hearted, because their staff are perennially “snowed under”.

As a “PS” I would say: beware of “reading across” from the PO case, and the example of the firm that told its staff not to wear helmets. The latter is a particularly poor example for most purposes, because their risk assessment was particular to the very unusual type of bikes they use, which may be nothing like the ones you use. Any “suitable and sufficient” risk assessment should look at the particulars of what you and your colleagues are using bikes for, what sorts of bikes, the environment in which you use them etc.

Kevin (cyclist, holder of a masters degree in engineering safety and, a very long time ago, a TU Rep.)
Last edited by Nearholmer on 19 May 2022, 8:30am, edited 2 times in total.
slowster
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Re: Help! Work has brought in their own safety policy on bike travel between sites

Post by slowster »

simonineaston wrote: 18 May 2022, 11:02pm It will be no help to the original poster, but I can't help but lament what a gloomy world we inhabit now, where everything is all about liability and performance targets. As populations and pressures grow, we tend to lose sight of each other as people.
Important to keep a sense of perspective:
fatals.png
(Click to enlarge)

It's not 'all about liability and performance targets'. It's about what it has always been about: competence vs. incompetence. So called 'H&S Officers' can also be competent or incompetent, but thanks to the progress we have made over the last few decades, there are fewer incompetent ones and/or they are killing fewer people, even if the price that we pay is that the incompetent ones produce lazy tick-box risk assessments like the OP's employer's cycling policy.
Ron
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Re: Help! Work has brought in their own safety policy on bike travel between sites

Post by Ron »

You could not be forced to wear any old helmet, it should comply with current construction standards, Perhaps the EU standards have been retained, or perhaps not.
slowster
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Re: Help! Work has brought in their own safety policy on bike travel between sites

Post by slowster »

In my opinion, a good safety manager/risk assessor would recognise that there are potentially significant problems with seeking to micro-manage the risks associated with cycling between work sites on public roads. Once an employer starts to stipulate in detail what an employee must do away from the actual workplace, they potentially expose themselves to legal action for any omissions. When an employer exercises a significant degree of control over the activities of employees away from the workplace, they have to do so properly and sufficiently thoroughly. A lazy tick box approach (e.g. PPE and use cycle paths) will potentially be used against them. In other words, they could find themselves in court being asked by a barrister why, if they thought the risks were serious enough to insist upon a helmet or hi-viz, did they not also do XYZ?

For example:

- Did they ride and check the cycle paths? If an employee is injured on the paths because they are in poor condition or badly lit, or attacked, robbed or sexually assaulted because the paths run through unsafe areas, then telling employees that they are expected to use those paths will be used against the employer in court.

- Did they check the condition of the employee's bike? Unlike with a car, there is no annual MoT for bikes which the employer can rely on to provide a degree of assurance that the bike is roadworthy and safe. If the safety of employees on bikes is important enough to insist on helmets and hi-viz, it's also important enough to have some procedures to check that bikes are roadworthy and safe.

- Did they check that a employee was competent to ride a bike on public roads? Employers can rely on drivers passing their driving test and having a driving license as evidence of competence to drive a car. They can make no such assumptions about competence to ride a bike, and they ought therefore to undertake some checks of employees' competence to ride a bike on the road.

An important factor in all this is that PPE is at the very bottom of the hierachy of control measures in work related H&S legislation, i.e. it is the last resort and should only be used if other measures have already been either implemented and are still not considered entirely sufficient, or have been determined to be unreasonable and impractical. I would not want to argue in court that it was appropriate to insist upon hemets and hi-viz, but not reasonable or practical, for example, to check that an employee had a bike with working brakes.

IMO, a smart competent safety officer would word the company safety policy with regard to bike use to exercise minimal formal pro-active control over the employee. I would suggest a policy which stated that:

- employees are responsible for ensuring that their bike is roadworthy and safe.
- employees are responsible for ensuring that they are familiar with the Highway Code, and for complying with it.
- employees should choose suitable routes, prioritising less heavily trafficked/safer routes where possible and appropriate.
mattheus
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Re: Help! Work has brought in their own safety policy on bike travel between sites

Post by mattheus »

DevonDamo wrote: 18 May 2022, 9:32pm
cycle tramp wrote: 18 May 2022, 8:34pmIs my place of work right in restricting how I use the road network? Do I have any recourse to object and if so on what grounds? Any advice would be appreciated :-)
Yes , providing you're actually 'at work' whilst riding between sites your employer can insist you wear hi vis, helmet - and mickey mouse ears if that's what they want. There may be all sorts of ways to request an exception to their policy, e.g. via a safety committee or just talking to the boss. This sort of issue is not uncommon on industrial sites - a typical example being management deciding to apply a blanket 'wear safety eyewear when out on plant' rule, ... <snip>
The public highway is not an industrial site. Your journey is no more hazardous than the commute to work undertaken by any/every employee. So I call balderdash, Sir!
thirdcrank
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Re: Help! Work has brought in their own safety policy on bike travel between sites

Post by thirdcrank »

The OP won't get a successful outcome based on dogma, from either employer or employees
ratherbeintobago
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Re: Help! Work has brought in their own safety policy on bike travel between sites

Post by ratherbeintobago »

OK, thinking laterally here.

An employer that is big enough to have multiple sites is also likely to have CO2 reduction targets, of which staff travel (to work and between sites) is part.

There is also likely to be a sustainability officer - I would have a word with them, given that HiViz etc doesn't make people safer and acts as a deterrent.

There's also the issue above of if they want you to wear PPE then they should provide it and it should be of an adequate standard (and there's an argument that HiVIz should be orange due to better contrast rather than yellow, which often blends in against foliage, hence what Network Rail use orange for line side workers) - worth getting the unions involved. Also worth knowing whether there is a policy for use of work or personal vehicles for such travel?
slowster wrote: 19 May 2022, 12:22amIMO, a smart competent safety officer would word the company safety policy with regard to bike use to exercise minimal formal pro-active control over the employee. I would suggest a policy which stated that:

- employees are responsible for ensuring that their bike is roadworthy and safe.
- employees are responsible for ensuring that they are familiar with the Highway Code, and for complying with it.
- employees should choose suitable routes, prioritising less heavily trafficked/safer routes where possible and appropriate.
I'd put that to them. Again, compliance with the HC and traffic laws should also apply to non-cyclists travelling on work time.
thirdcrank
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Re: Help! Work has brought in their own safety policy on bike travel between sites

Post by thirdcrank »

ratherbeintobago wrote: 19 May 2022, 9:55am OK, thinking laterally here.

An employer that is big enough to have multiple sites is also likely to have CO2 reduction targets, of which staff travel (to work and between sites) is part.

There is also likely to be a sustainability officer - I would have a word with them, given that HiViz etc doesn't make people safer and acts as a deterrent.

There's also the issue above of if they want you to wear PPE then they should provide it and it should be of an adequate standard (and there's an argument that HiVIz should be orange due to better contrast rather than yellow, which often blends in against foliage, hence what Network Rail use orange for line side workers) - worth getting the unions involved. Also worth knowing whether there is a policy for use of work or personal vehicles for such travel?
slowster wrote: 19 May 2022, 12:22amIMO, a smart competent safety officer would word the company safety policy with regard to bike use to exercise minimal formal pro-active control over the employee. I would suggest a policy which stated that:

- employees are responsible for ensuring that their bike is roadworthy and safe.
- employees are responsible for ensuring that they are familiar with the Highway Code, and for complying with it.
- employees should choose suitable routes, prioritising less heavily trafficked/safer routes where possible and appropriate.
I'd put that to them. Again, compliance with the HC and traffic laws should also apply to non-cyclists travelling on work time. (My bold)
I'm pretty sure that the bit I I've highlighted is an implied term of any contract of employment. Perhaps the point is that it's so much taken for granted that it's not always emphasised.
mattheus
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Re: Help! Work has brought in their own safety policy on bike travel between sites

Post by mattheus »

ratherbeintobago wrote: 19 May 2022, 9:55am . Also worth knowing whether there is a policy for use of work or personal vehicles for such travel?
<snip>
...

Again, compliance with the HC and traffic laws should also apply to non-cyclists travelling on work time.
Yes, I think that might be the most pragmatic (yet also logic-based) approach.

Logically, there is clearly no need for cyclists to be micro-managed more than driving/pedestrian employees. A good way to broach this probably is to suggest that cyclists follow the same precedent setup for drivers (i.e. almost certainly no action required!)

---------------------------------
I've never worked anywhere with safety rules for drivers (apart from safety checks for the company van). They may exist in more safety-conscious organisations, but I bet they are rare ...
ratherbeintobago
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Re: Help! Work has brought in their own safety policy on bike travel between sites

Post by ratherbeintobago »

mattheus wrote: 19 May 2022, 10:21amI've never worked anywhere with safety rules for drivers (apart from safety checks for the company van). They may exist in more safety-conscious organisations, but I bet they are rare ...
Without wanting to go down a rabbit hole, I thought a lot of (larger) companies had van use policies as essentially they're mobile billboards, and it doesn't create a great impression when they're being driven idiotically.
Jdsk
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Re: Help! Work has brought in their own safety policy on bike travel between sites

Post by Jdsk »

thirdcrank wrote: 19 May 2022, 9:54am The OP won't get a successful outcome based on dogma, from either employer or employees
I agree.

And unlike the many other discussions about helmets progress won't be made by looking at the available evidence. This one's a matter of employment law and practice.

Jonathan
mattheus
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Re: Help! Work has brought in their own safety policy on bike travel between sites

Post by mattheus »

Jdsk wrote: 19 May 2022, 11:01am
thirdcrank wrote: 19 May 2022, 9:54am The OP won't get a successful outcome based on dogma, from either employer or employees
I agree.

And unlike the many other discussions about helmets progress won't be made by looking at the available evidence. This one's a matter of employment law and practice.

Jonathan
Has there been much progress in the many other discussions about helmets?
Jdsk
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Re: Help! Work has brought in their own safety policy on bike travel between sites

Post by Jdsk »

Nearholmer wrote: 18 May 2022, 11:28pm While you are at work, your employer has duties to care for your health and safety, so at the barest level: yes, they may be within their rights to make requirements about how you conduct yourself while cycling as part of your work.

Their requirements should be grounded in a “suitable and sufficient” risk assessment, and if there is a problem in what they are requiring, the root of it may be that their risk assessment wasn’t “suitable and sufficient”, which is particularly likely to be the case if it wasn’t undertaken by people who have a good understanding of the realities of cycling.

If you believe that what you are being required to do is unreasonable, step one should be to talk it over with your manager, advising your H&S representative, if you have one, in parallel. If that doesn’t result in mutual understanding, the routes of escalation depend a great deal on whether or not you are a TU member, and if so whether your TU is prepared to take the matter up on your behalf. You can, as an individual employee, raise matters direct with HSE, but it’s a time-consuming process, not for the faint hearted, because their staff are perennially “snowed under”.

As a “PS” I would say: beware of “reading across” from the PO case, and the example of the firm that told its staff not to wear helmets. The latter is a particularly poor example for most purposes, because their risk assessment was particular to the very unusual type of bikes they use, which may be nothing like the ones you use. Any “suitable and sufficient” risk assessment should look at the particulars of what you and your colleagues are using bikes for, what sorts of bikes, the environment in which you use them etc.

Kevin (cyclist, holder of a masters degree in engineering safety and, a very long time ago, a TU Rep.)
Thankyou for describing the way forward for the OP. I agree with the approach.

And it's hard to take it much further than this without the OP's answers to the questions asked upthread

Jonathan
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