Good health and safety is widely recognised as equating to good business in terms of culture and leadership. Getting health and safety right not only drives behaviour but reducing risk can also be a powerful tool in gaining stakeholder approval. Disruption to recruitment of staff and students is minimised as incident frequency decreases.

Organisations may have adopted lean tools such as Six Sigma, but how do these work in remote production facilities where the focus is on lagging indicators?

How can you ‘measure the green’?

When investment decisions have to be made, how are these capitalised to provide the best value in terms of getting results? Understanding the risks allows boards of directors to minimise exposure to enforcement action by doing ‘all that is reasonably practicable’. Spotting risks may be a tough challenge for senior decision-makers who may not have full visibility of the spectrum of hazards facing their organisation in a particular geographical space.

Integrated Safety Management A legal review of culture and performance

Our expert team of lawyers help organisations identify their shortcomings and meet their health and safety obligations, protecting both people and reputations, to create sustainable, long-term improvements in culture and safety performance.

Our approach centres on assessing the way in which systems are actually implemented on the ground as a means of addressing behaviour and culture. This approach is informed by decades of experience as the leading health and safety legal team in the country. The positive benefits of getting it right are significant; the consequences of getting it wrong can be catastrophic. Our lawyers share their own expertise and experiences of working with clients who have had serious incidents to help you avoid such outcomes. We can then give you practical advice on how to improve safety performance and can link you with independent experts to deal with discrete areas of concern. All such advice is legally privileged.

The health and safety landscape has changed - as have the risks and opportunities it affords. An increasing global focus on legal compliance with safety requirements alongside an ever more demanding stakeholder populace has sharpened regulatory focus. Organisations have to work increasingly hard to protect both their legal position and their reputation.

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Integrated Safety Management A legal review of culture and performance

Parent company out of the jurisdiction

Our client is a US-based organisation with a significant manufacturing footprint in Ireland. A serious safety incident prompted the question as to how effective global health and safety directives were being implemented at site level. External health and safety professionals had previously been utilised to carry out audits; those audits had focused on minor environmental non-conformances. Using a team of lawyers, Eversheds were able to visit every location and produce a comprehensive action plan to help our client reduce the likelihood of such incidents occurring again.

Recent acquisition

Our client recently acquired a non-core entity. It commissioned Eversheds to look at the overall effectiveness of safety systems within the group so as to disseminate the best practices and align the businesses from a safety perspective.

Serious incident causes you to doubt

Our UK pharmaceutical client had a serious near miss in a laboratory. Our review was able to look at other emerging risks and assisted in capital budget allocation which prioritised fire resilience.

Intervention by the regulator

Our global diversified industry client was involved in two incidents in which employees died at work. The regulator became involved and served an Improvement Notice requiring a complete review of practices and procedures alongside a programme to improve. Our six week review discharged the statutory notice and provided the international board with a road map towards compliance.

Sustainability and stakeholders’ reporting metric

Our client was a venture capital firm who had purchased an energy company at a reduced rate without conducting full due diligence. The new board of the acquisition wished to ensure that there were no fundamental gaps in the organisations safety management system such as could lead to personal liability in the case of a serious safety incident. Our 20 top risks review gave the new board a focus to allocate safety capital and our follow up report was able to inform the board as to the extent to which agreed actions had been completed.

Brand Integrity

Our university client faced a hugely damaging reputational incident when there were suggestions that a dangerous and toxic substance may be present on campus. Our forensic review considered all of the evidence, interviewed over 30 staff and concluded that while the instant issue was not anywhere near as serious as first perceived, there were ancillary issues that needed to be immediately addressed so as not to breach entirely separate legislation.

When would I need this service?

Integrated Safety Management A legal review of culture and performance

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Why Eversheds?

Unlike other traditional safety professionals, all of our reports are legally privileged, meaning that in the event we discover a 'smoking gun' you are not obliged to hand any reports to a regulator in the event of an unwelcome outcome occurring at a later stage.

Our international offering allows quick access to top level legal advice. We can provide seamless advice to an international client in a consistent fashion. Our leading lawyers in the UK have covered just about every major case in the UK over the last 20 years including Buncefield, Dreamspace, The Morecambe Bay Helicopter Crash, Mid Staffs Inquiry; Potters Bar and others. We know how to get it right by learning from how others have got it wrong.

Eversheds’ international client base includes globally recognised brands, national giants, banks, property developers and our Corporate team advise on significant transactions. In this team we deal with complex, technical safety issues ranging from third party contractor fatalities at work through to CE marking and environmental issues on a daily basis. Whatever your industry, we will have seen it and done it before. We bring this industry experience into the education sphere to learn cross over lessons.

Eversheds lawyers are not just learned legal advisors. They are business people with excellent communication skills - every year, the safety team holds an invitation only safety conference which attracts captains of industry, politicians and decision makers to discuss important changes to the regulatory landscape.

Our Health and Safety team has the most sophisticated legal training solution. We are experts in embedding learning from reviews to drive behavioural change; reiterating the potential consequences of failure to act by way of direct discussion, case studies, mock trials, evolving scenario and board presentation. Our review can include a practical analysis of an organisation’s process for dealing with injuries and claims resulting in an integrated overview that allows for lessons to be learnt and future risks to be reduced.

We increasingly advise international clients on their business operations worldwide. Our network is second to none. Need an expert on pedestrian segregation? We will link you up. Problems with a SEVESO assessment? We know someone who can help. Stress issues amongst senior executives? We know counsellors and therapists. We will help you discover what lies beneath and deal with any issues arising.

What we will do

This is not an audit. Our approach is to meet on a no obligation basis to understand what you hope to achieve. We will then scope the review; conduct a desktop review to agreed parameters; and then, crucially, spend time with your people on the ground in your locations to understand how resilient your safety management is. We can compare your management system to industry standards and pinpoint key areas of weakness. We recognise issues that are of interest to regulators.

How do I learn more?

Emma Trainor+353 1 6644904emmatrainor@eversheds.ie

Stephen Barry+353 1 6644 284stephenbarry@eversheds.ie

Elaine Fox+353 1 6644 944elainefox@eversheds.com

©Eversheds Ireland is a member of Eversheds International Limited.

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