Over recent years the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health (IOSH) has broadly welcomed new guidelines, which describe how risk management assessments must be included in the accounts of every company listed on the London Stock Exchange. However, at Amalgamate we are concerned that they do not place enough emphasis on occupational health and safety issues.
The guidelines contained in the ‘Turnbull report’ issued by the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW), spell out how to comply with the London Stock Exchange Combined Code. The code requires all listed companies to have appropriate controls in place to manage significant risks to their businesses, including those related to occupational 20health and safety.
It is easy to disregard the significance of managing health and safety effectively but considering the following questions may change that opinion:
- Does senior management feel confident that it understands the business’ risk exposure & the nature of its risk-return relationships?
- How comfortable is senior management with the risks being taken by the business?
- Does senior management feel confident that it could defend its risk-return decisions after a safety incident or a disaster?
- Where do the major health & safety risks arising from its business processes rank in relation to other business risks?
- What would senior management hate to see reported in the media?
- What safety incidents & near misses have already happened to the business or its competitors in recent years?
While we welcome the guidelines contained in the Combined Code and Turnbull report as an opportunity to give a higher profile to issues of risk assessment and corporate governance, we would have liked both to contain a more explicit statement on the importance of health and safety.