Safety at Work
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Safety at Work Report

We explore the subject of safety in the workplace in 2021.

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The launch of the 2022 Dräger Safety at Work Report

Dräger SafetyBy Dräger Safety10 October 2022

Now in its second year, Dräger’s ‘Safety at Work’ research report is widely recognised as an important source of insight and information in the health and safety sector.

The 2022 Report is available to download for free here. It is based on independent research involving interviews with over 1,200 people, compromising of both managers and employees.

Key findings within the Report include:

  • Positives: The majority of British workers (52%) feel safer at work than they did a year ago, with the top three reasons for this being:
  • ‘My business is taking safety more seriously’ – 67%
  • ‘Safety training at my workplace following Covid’ – 54%
  • ‘My company is spending more money on workplace safety than before – 33%
  • Concerns: Despite the positive headlines, significant threats / concerns were highlighted, including:
    • A safety ‘brain drain’ – amidst record employment flux, the research showed that the leading reason for people feeling less safe at work was the loss of older, more experienced workers from the workforce (32%).
    • 37% stated that there needs to be more effort made to make sure that experience is handed down to the next generation of workers.
    • Younger people (25 – 34 years old) feel the least safe of any age group, with almost one in five (18%) saying they feel increasingly less safe at work.
    • Concerns about a major industrial disaster (on the scale of Buncefield or Piper Alpha): more than half (55%) of managers have concerns about such an incident happening in the next five years.
    • Supply Chain issues – Four in ten (40 %) managers stated that the current supply chain problems posed the most significant current threat to workplace safety, due to lack of availability of parts such as sensors and semiconductors.

 

Commenting on the launch of this year’s report, Matthew Bedford, Managing Director, Draeger Safety UK said: “Our 2022 research shows that 77% of British workers feel that workplace safety is more important as a business priority than it was a year ago.

 

“It is clear that Covid has created an unprecedented opportunity to initiate a positive and long-term legacy when it comes to workplace safety. Not only are most employees now familiar with who their business’s health & safety lead is, but health and safety professionals have had board recognition like never before.

 

“Now that the impact of Covid in the workplace is reduced, there is a significant opportunity for health and safety to retain the more prominent, often board-level, position that we saw during Covid, with the potential to have a lasting positive legacy on health & safety in businesses in years to come.”

 

Look out for future episodes of this blog with more detailed analysis and commentary around the key topics raised in the report.