How we’re elevating health
The rail industry is increasingly recognising the importance of health. Improving health will make rail more productive and more able to withstand unexpected disruptions. But to make meaningful improvements, industry needs an agreed strategy and designated people.
Industry also needs to know that that strategy is relevant to its needs and issues. The Rail Health and Safety Strategy (‘the strategy’) has been developed by industry, for industry, and using data insights. At all stages of its development, contributions from industry and insights from data have been vital in flagging up issues and making sure they were addressed effectively.
So, what is the strategy trying to achieve? Its overall goal is to solidify the GB railway as the world’s healthiest, safest, and affordable railway. To do this, health needs to be ‘on par with safety’. This is an important step-change in the approach to health in rail.
Intensifying collaboration
Within the strategy, ‘health and wellbeing’ and ‘occupational health and safety’ are two of five key risk areas, and they directly relate to the management of employee health. The strategy highlights the need for an intensification of cooperation on health throughout the industry so that collaboration becomes the automatic norm.
The strategy uses three key principles to drive delivery, each of which will help improve health and wellbeing:
- improving performance and accessibility
- finding better ways of managing safety risks
- improving environmental conditions for staff.
However, setting out a clear strategy based on industry insight and expertise is only part of the story.
Who’s involved?
An effective strategy also needs designated groups of people to act on the strategy and drive it forward. This is the role of all the groups involved with the Rail Wellbeing Alliance (RWA) and the System Safety and Risk Group (SSRG).
Past achievements of the RWA include strong links with Rail Wellbeing Live, the development of a prototype for a health and wellbeing data hub, the Railway Mental Health Charter, and the fatigue survey. And there’s the development of an occupational hygiene strategy, too.
So, it already holds a valuable role within industry. It now has three new subgroups which are:
- the Fatigue Coordination Group
- the Health and Wellbeing Action Group
- the Occupational Health and Hygiene Advisory Group.
Members of the RWA include director-level industry sponsors as well as workstream chairs and industry-wide representation. The Office of Rail and Road (ORR) is an observer, too.
The SSRG is also important in elevating health. It will be driving the strategy forward from a safety perspective, supported by its subgroups. These include the Asset Integrity Group, the Infrastructure
Safety Leadership Group, and the National Freight Safety Group, to mention just three. SSRG is observed by the Department for Transport as well as the ORR.
All this means that industry can have confidence not only in what the strategy for health is, but in how it’s being implemented too.
Rail Health and Safety Strategy
Find out the goals and key areas of the Rail Health and Safety Strategy.
Related articles in this campaign series
The vision of the Rail Wellbeing Alliance is to inspire healthy lives across the railway.
The System Safety and Risk Group promotes collaboration on safety issues.
