Judith Hackitt, chair of the Health and Safety Executive said that health and safety is important to business as it helps to prevent injury and increase productivity. Other speakers echoed this, saying that good health and safety practices can reduce staff absenteeism and help to reduce costs. This is all well and good, but how can staff wellbeing be improved?

Many of the speakers at the conference were in agreement that employees must be involved in the decision making process about health and safety, if the decisions are to work in practice. Employees need to be trained to exercise their judgment - they cannot simply be told to follow a particular decision. When it comes to an emergency, staff need to have the skills to exercise their discretion wisely and a “do as I say” approach will not work.

Another popular theme arising from the conference, was that every business should identify their problem areas and focus on those. While no aspect of health and safety should be neglected, a business will have a much better chance of getting it right if it first identifies the particular risks in its workplace and tackles those.

An interesting point made around the issue of stress, was that the self-employed rarely suffer from stress because they know what direction they’re moving in. Sharing information with staff about the value of their role within the organisation as a whole can help to eliminate stress.