The Dräger Safety and Health at Work Report

Safety & Health at Work in 2024 – Some takeaways from this year’s research 

• Rethink factors in 2024 that are important include the greater need for focus on; mental health/wellbeing, limited funding/budgets, environmental and social governance (ESG), ageing workforce/later retirement, potential impact of digital growth, changing expectations of younger employees and more focus on diversity & inclusion.
• Workers continue to say that they feel safer at work than in previous years. This is largely due to better safety training, more focus on mental health & wellbeing and more company spend on workplace safety. 
• Innovation remains key. Future challenges to safety include being able to keep pace with advances in safety technology, such as digitalisation and connectivity, balancing sustainability with safety and diversity and inclusion issues. 
• Workers believe that the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 should be updated. 94% think that, in the light of changing workplaces and different working styles, the Health and Safety legislation introduced in 1974 should be overhauled. 

Employees continue to feel safer at work – due to greater company spend, company knowledge, more use of safety technology and improved safety training. However, almost half are concerned about the risk of a major safety incident in their organisation in the next five years.

• Sustainability is one of the key issues seen to be competing with safety as a business priority, although most think that the two can co-exist, and that sustainability can even positively impact safety. Employees are more likely to see safety as a more important consideration in choosing an employer than sustainability. However, a rush to innovate – for example in relation to the energy transition – may compromise safety, and the recent stuttering of the energy transition may slow down health and safety momentum.
• Artificial intelligence (AI) and immersive technology is seen to play a key role in improving safety. Whilst most see safety at work as everyone’s responsibility, it is seen as best achieved through a balance of smart technology and human supervisors.
• Challenges with safety provision include skills shortages, budgetary constraints, a younger workforce with different levels of knowledge and training expectations, keeping up with regulations and evolving safety risks.

The majority of the UK workforce feels safer at work than they did a year ago, echoing government data outlining that the UK ranks second place in workplace safety in Europe.

•  However, threats do exist: This year’s research shows that these threats arise from the global supply chain problems, whether it’s from issues moving goods as a result of Brexit or availability of goods such as semiconductors and potential impacts on health and safety in UK workplaces. In addition there are growing concerns around the risk of a major disaster, and a loss of experienced workers, partly due to record levels of churn in the employment market.
• In the clean energy sector in particular, workers believe there is room for improvement in terms of equipment and training and experts believe that there is need for legislation in order to better protect workers.

The significant and unprecedented impact of Covid-19 on UK businesses was felt across many areas, but arguably most acutely by those responsible for health and safety.

• The lack of awareness around potential workplace impairment resulting from mainstream medical treatments for illnesses such as anxiety and depression is an issue particularly highlighted in our research. It is vitally important that the understanding of such issues is better realised by those responsible for people’s safety at work and must be part of the subsequent debate around the issue by UK businesses.
• There are significant training backlogs and an urgent need to re-focus safety efforts away from the all-consuming Covid 19 safety concerns that businesses have had to address, and back to the somewhat neglected core day-to-day hazards faced by a large number of people in workplaces.
•  Advances in technology and the increasingly sophisticated use of data, offer hugely positive potential for employee safety, and if used correctly, have enormous possibilities to help improve the way in which people work in hazardous environments.