QCS International

Most new laws come into force on one of two common commencement dates each year; 6 April and 1 October. This enables you to prepare your business for the introduction of new requirements.

Here are some of the main changes that could affect your business.

1. Increase in Landfill Tax…

The standard rate of landfill tax will increase from £40 to £48 per tonne.   The new rate applies for disposals made – or treated as made – on or after 1 April 2010.   Note that it is planned that the standard rate will increase by £8 per tonne each April up to and including April 2013, ie from 1 April 2013, landfill tax will be £72 per tonne.

2. New Format Sicknotes…

The format of medical certificates (sick notes) – will change.   Medical certificates are issued by doctors to employees when they are ill or injured. They are commonly used by employers as evidence for sick pay purposes.

With the current statement, doctors describe an individual’s condition and indicate whether or not they are fit to work.   From 6 April 2010, the new statement – known as a statement of fitness for work or ‘fit note’ - will mean doctors can advise that the patient either:

• not fit for work
• may be fit for work

A doctor will give a ‘may be fit for work’ statement if they think that your employee’s health condition may allow them to work – as long as you give them the appropriate support.

Regulation Title: Social Security (Medical Evidence) and Statutory Sick Pay (Medical Evidence) (Amendment) Regulations 2010 (SI 2010/137)

3. New Fire Regulations (Note: England Only)

New regulations will clarify your responsibilities to consider the capabilities of your workers to carry out any fire safety-related tasks or assignments.   You will have to think about:

• what a worker is able and unable to do when giving them tasks
• how these capabilities may affect their ability to deal with fire-related risks

For example, you will have to consider a worker’s capabilities as regards fire safety if you ask them to work with flammable chemicals.

A recent DEFRA survey has provided organisations with an insight into how consumer perceptions have changed over the last few years in terms of ‘Going Green’.   Once only a thing for radicals such as ‘Swampy’ (remember him?) this survey shows that the ‘Green Pound’ is now a big influence on how we all shop.

Public attitudes…

75% of the UK population now believe that recycling and reducing our car and plane emissions will significantly reduce the impact on the environment.   Indeed, within the last 10 years, recycling has doubled.

The public have also indicated that the environment is now one of the top 4 priorities that they want the Government to deal with.

The Green Pound…

This means that consumers are now changing how they spend their money.   For instance, 52% of people now say they will not buy from a company that has a poor eco record.   Fair trade is now recognised as a ‘Brand’ to purchase and consumers are now choosing to buy from local producers to lead a more sustainable life style.

Marketing you green credentials…

So do you have to spend mega bucks on this to keep your current customers happy?   The simple answer is no.   Just take a look at what Marks & Spencer’s have done.

Plan A…

M&S may be good at food and underpants but they are also good at Green Spin with their ‘Plan A’ (apparently there isn’t a Plan B).   Now some of the Plan A initiatives are noble but M&S have also taken the opportunity to actively market their legal requirements.

Under the WEEE Directive, M&S as a distributor of electrical goods, are obliged to provide information to consumers on how to dispose/recycle electrical goods.   They do this with plenty of spin by saying that as Part of Plan A they are in a ‘take back scheme’ to reduce the amount of electrical goods going to landfill.

There are some other great examples from retailers but the moral of the story is by starting with your legal requirements and marketing these in the right way, you can certainly begin to position your company as a Green Supplier.

The hottest buzz word at the minute is risk and how to manage it so it is not surprising that ISO have just issued ISO/IEC 31010 on risk management and risk assessment techniques.   So what is it all about and is any use?

The simple answer is maybe although in saying this I run the risk of getting splinters from sitting on the fence.

If you like the generic nature of PAS 99 for the implementation of integrated systems, then this is for you.   Its very ‘non specific’ so doesn’t tie you to a specific approach like FEMA or HACCP, and has a framework that supports continual improvement.

The Highlights…

Not unsurprisingly ISO/IEC 31010 is based on the Plan do check act cycle and it structures risk management in a simple way as follows:

• Identify the activities/things that could present a risk.   H&S/Automotive and Food systems call these hazards, Environmental systems and PAS 99 call these aspects.

• Review the needs of stakeholders.   Customers and legislation obviously but also general public and suppliers may be considered as stakeholders to name but a couple.   Basically ask yourself this – what are the legal/contractual requirements as a minimum because if you don’t comply with these it is a high risk.

• Assess the risk for each of the activities/hazards/aspects.   Make sure you keep it real – don’t over analyse every last detail but get the ‘big hitters’ into the assessment.

• Identify what you are doing already to control the activity and then estimate the risk by assessing the severity of the issue and the potential frequency of the issue happening with the current controls in place.

• Pull together a priority list of the areas that need additional controls.   The higher the severity and frequency, the higher the priority.

• Ensure that the control measures (old and new ones) and monitored.   How you monitor the controls  will depend on what the control actually is but, monitoring may be done by audit, inspection or physical measurement.

Keep it alive…

Review everything periodically based on any issues the business has seen, monitoring and measurement results and changes to stakeholder requirements and use this to set improvement objectives.   The most important thing is to keep your risk assessments alive by reviewing them in the light of any changes.

Did you know that last year 4500 memory sticks were found in the pockets of clothes taken to the dry cleaners?   And with the frequent high profile data leaks that now occur every few months, there is many a horror story concerning the most basic of ISO 9001 requirements – ‘Control of Records’.

Section 4.2.4 of ISO 9001 requires you to store, protect, retrieve, retain and (safely) dispose of records.   But for such a relatively simple requirement, we all still seem to think of records as paper rather than electronic data.    Here are some of the most common issues with electronic records/data we have seen recently…

Cheap Memory Sticks…

You can buy them from Amazon for less than a pound – you can even pick one up as a freebie next time a sales rep come to visit but do you really want to trust your data onto something that cheap?

Key issues with using memory sticks are – they are easy to lose, cheap sticks are not that reliable and can corrupt data and because they are so easy to use, people tend not to back them up.   This year alone, QCS has seen critical company records that are required by law, lost because of the use of cheap memory sticks.

I always back up using a re writable CD…

Great idea – back up your company data on CDs so that if you accidently delete your records on your computer, you have a back up copy.   You also have a handy archive.

Beware however…according to many IT professionals, rewritable CDs are good for about 4-5 years before data can start to corrupt on the disc so if you are relying on rewritable CDs for archive records of longer than 5 years you will need to think of another way to archive.

Damaged tapes…

I recently audited a company who had to retain records for 80 years and they took it very seriously due to the legal implications of loosing certain records and data.   All data was stored on a central sever and data could not be stored on laptops, desktops of memory sticks.   They religiously backed up their data on tapes and kept them locked away in a fire proof safe.

I asked if they ever did a data restore just to check the system was working – they never had so they gave it a go.   None of the backup tapes worked!

The tapes were quite old and had not been replaced for years so when it came to recovering data, they did not work.

I’ve got a Big 1 Terabyte plug & play NAS drive…

I have one and I have no idea what it is other than it stores data!   The bottom line is if you store data on hard drives, solid state drives, tapes, NAS drives or your laptop, you need to make sure that your electronic data is

• Stored securely
• Protected damage, corruption and loss
• You can retrieve it easily
• You retain it for however long you may need it
• You dispose of any data safely (what do you do to the hard drive when you throw a laptop away?)

Love them or not, the ISO gurus thought of this when they wrote ‘Control of records’ into ISO 9001, way before memory sticks were invented.

And so over the last couple of weeks, Gordon Brown has found himself at the centre of a bullying scandal and his allegedly abusive behaviour to his staff.

The Director of an anti-bullying helpline has made public claims that Downing Street aids have contacted the helpline with issues and concerns about Gordon Brown’s bullying culture.

Bullying in the workplace is more common than you may think according to Bullying UK, and if you perceive it to be a problem at work or not, there are a few simple steps that you can take to ensure you are safeguarding your organisation.

What is bullying?

According to the HSE, bullying may be characterized as offensive, intimidating, malicious or insulting behavior, an abuse or misuse of power through means intended to undermine, humiliate, denigrate or injure the recipient.

How do you manage bullying?

ACAS has produced a practical Guide to Bullying for managers.

The main point to effective management is to;

• ensure a policy is in place that clearly explains what bullying is and the consequences of bullying
• train your management team to understand what bullying actually is and how to use the policy
• communicate the policy to your organisation so that everyone understands
• manage teams to ensure that standards of behavior are set and your management team actively takes action if bullying is reported.

OK, but what if someone actually reports an incident?

Initially it is always worth trying to informally fix the issue with the person making the compliant and the alleged bully – it could always be just a conflict of personality.

If you feel the issue needs to be elevated then a formal complaint needs to be raised and you need to investigate this following your bullying policy and your discipline & grievance policy.

So as the Downing Street debate continues you may think this is a storm in a teacup but it is worth while protecting yourself by having a policy in place and proactively managing this aspect of health & safety just in case.