Awareness + Focus = Healthier and Safer People

Friday, June 18, 2021

Nobody sets out to cause harm to themselves or others when they go to work. Issues tend to happen either because people don’t fully understand potential risks or because they have a momentary loss of focus. In other words, they don’t stop and think about the potential consequences of what they are about to do.

Osborne’s STOP Think! programme addresses safety from a cultural and behavioural perspective. While it’s a gateway to valuable resources and guidance, the biggest objective is always to keep safety, health and environmental issues at the front of people’s minds.

The programme is well established within Osborne Infrastructure and our partners. It’s also an umbrella for additional initiatives such as the Wellbeing Wednesday live streams. These feature senior rail industry professionals and wellbeing experts. The aim is to apply good practice in the areas of physical and mental wellbeing in a highly relevant way for people working in infrastructure and construction.

The Wellbeing Calendar

Osborne also maintains an interactive online Wellbeing Calendar. This draws attention to one particularly relevant issue each month with links to further information, posters, videos and materials to support toolbox talks. In June, for example, the focus is on hydration and exposure to sunlight. July is all about skin: the essential role it plays in keeping us healthy and how to look after it.

Our operatives are likely to come into contact with a variety of substances that could irritate or damage their skin. They also work in the open air a great deal and need to be kept aware of the risks of too much exposure to sunlight.

Toolbox Talks

For a wide range of SHE topics, toolbox talks are an important way to spread and reinforce understanding. The talks are supported by factsheets on topics as diverse as Lyme disease and how to protect great crested newts.

The STOP Think! programme is complemented by our Improvement Opportunity (IO) platform. Every month, hundreds of employees and partners use this to submit suggestions for how health, safety and other processes can be improved. Without the platform many of these suggestions would never be shared.

STOP Think! and the IO application have helped us improve our SHE performance significantly. But we know we still have a long way to go and that a major incident is only ever a momentary lapse of concentration or judgement away. That’s why we’ll never ease off in our efforts or assume that the job is done.