cycle tramp wrote: ↑19 May 2022, 10:34pm
If anything it's helped me appreciate my employer's point of view.
By introducing these rules, your employer and your company's safety adviser/manager will be making a rod for their own backs. Rules like these should be introduced only where a risk assessment has determined that they are necessary. In this situation there is arguably no need even to undertake a risk assessment. Only risks which are 'significant' need to be risk assessed, and in general this sort of independent travel between work sites is unlikely to present a significant risk that needs to be controlled or mitigated by the employer, especially not a greater risk than commuting to and from work.
This is because if an employer determines that something is necessary to ensure the H&S of employees, then the employer must also make checks to ensure that the rules, safety equipment or whatever are being implemented/used. If there is non-compliance, the employer must take appropriate enforcement or corrective action. The employer must also keep records of the checks and the action that is taken to deal with non-compliance.
Failure to do the above is unlikely to have any consequence as far as enforcement of H&S law by the HSE, since an HSE inspector would not expect a risk assessment in the first place for independent travel between work sites (unless there were some particularly unusual circumstances), because the risk is not significant.
However, it potentially will have consequences as far as safety inspections/surveys/audits are concerned, whether they are internal or made by an external organisation, e.g. an auditor assessing compliance with a safety management standard. The auditor etc. will not only want to see risk assessments, they will also want to see the records of checks of compliance, and of action taken to correct non-compliance. If there are no records of checks or of non-compliance being corrected, the auditor will give a negative score and require the deficiencies to be corrected. This would not happen if there were no risk assessment and rules, because the auditor would not have considered them to be necessary for independent travel between work sites, because the risk is not significant.
It will also potentially have consequences in the event of the employer being sued for injury/death/damage involving an employee cycling between sites. The probability of an accident occurring of the type which a helmet is designed to protect against is extremely low, but if such an accident does occur and the employee is not wearing a helmet for reasons which a court finds to be the fault of the employer, the employer may be found liable to pay compensation. Examples where the employer might be held to be at fault might be if a new employee was not informed of the rule, had not (yet) been provided with a helmet, or was provided with a helmet which fitted poorly. In other words, by introducing these rules as a result of a risk assessment, the employer is determining that it owes to a duty of care which must be fulfilled by ensuring that a suitable helmet is provided, with the result that a failure to do so is an automatic breach of duty, i.e. the employer has itself created a duty of care where none previously existed, and in so doing created potential legal liability where none previously existed. In the absence of the risk assesment and the rules, the employer would probably not find itself involved in a court case, and court cases are extremely disruptive for businesses and staff, often taking up a lot of people's time and company resources, whatever the outcome of the case.
The need to enforce rules about helmet and hi-viz wearing will potentially also have consequences as far as employer-employee relations and staff morale are concerned. Some people will not want to wear them. Some will be aware that their effectiveness and value is not strongly supported by scientific studies, and will resent being made to wear one simply because the employer is box ticking. But having introduced the rule, the employer will have to enforce it, if necesary to the extent of taking disciplinary action against employees who do not comply. All of which will be completely unnecessary, since the risk is not significant.
I have already outlined above how I would word a company policy on cycling between sites to avoid these problems. The employer could also tell staff that it will pay for a helmet (and pay for a replacement helmet after 3(?) years) and provide a hi viz vest and/or jacket to anyone who wants one, with it remaining each employee's individual choice whether and when to wear them. I would however make it clear that this offer should not be abused, e.g. helmets being sold on ebay. The employer could also offer to pay for a mirror for an employee's bike if they wanted one, because, like many of us on this forum, I think mirrors offer a far bigger safety benefit than helmets or hi-viz.
However, my personal preference instead of paying for helmets etc., would be to arrange for a Bikeability instructor to provide some roadcraft training for employees who cycle. Training is expensive, especially when the employees' time out from normal duties while receiving training is factored in, and the benefits of training are often intangible (unlike a polystyrene hat or bright yellow vest) and difficult to quantify, which often makes high quality training difficult for many organisations to justify. Neverthless, it is very often the most efficient and cost effective safety measure. A couple of hours or so of roadcraft training is likely to reduce the risks far more than a helmet or hi-viz. Several hundred pounds for a training session might seem a lot of money, but a single accident cycling (whether between sites or commuting) to one employee resulting in time off work will probably cost more than that. Training is the most effective measure of altering and improving people's skills and behaviour, and the investment and commitment by the employer is likely to be appreciated by employees as a mark of the employer genuinely caring about their welfare.
A final comment. I suspect that the hemet and hi-viz rules were drawn up by someone with a fairly low level of H&S qualification/experience, e.g. a NEBOSH certificate holder. If, however, they were prepared by a H&S consultant, then I suggest the company gets a new consultant. Good consultants are not cheap, but they should save a business money and help it avoid pitfalls. Bad consultants may be cheap, but are likely to cost the business more.