Performance assessment in local authority food safety services

In June 2000 the Government launched a strategyaimed at ‘Revitalising Health and Safety’. Two yearson, at a conference in May 2002, the Local Govern-ment minister admitted that involving SME’s in thestrategy process was proving a “challenging” task. Heacknowledged that the daily survival pressures onsmall companies “can often mean health and safetybeing quietly relegated to the backburner andforgotten about”. This paper reports on the findings from four years’field-research. The crux of the study was theinvestigation of how safety is managed in smallbusinesses. The research considered howmanagement in micro and small organisationsdiffered from the approaches championed by largeemployers. The concern was that what is goodpractice for some businesses might not transpose toothers which differ in numbers of employees,managerial complexity and access to informationand advice. The research was based on a multi-method researchdesign utilising case studies which included a postalsurvey and focus groups. The aim of the study was toidentify how control and management of change forsafety improvements were effected in smallbusinesses, highlight where there was good practicewhich could, in full or part, transferable to otherSMEs. The case studies were therefore not intendedmerely to provide an accounting of how many smallfirms were under-performing, or performing well. The study revealed four key elements to successfulhazard identification and acknowledgement: formaltraining, experience or awareness of industry normsto facilitate the identification of hazards; regularand thorough workplace inspections and checks;reviews of accident/incident reports for causality;and regular ‘intelligence’ or feedback from informedstaff. Where one, or more, of these elements waslacking the ‘safety performance’ was found to beworse than where all elements formed part of regularmanagerial processes.