It has always been true that good health and safety is part of good management and cannot be achieved without it. The cost of failures in health and safety management are high:

	30 million days lost in a year from work-related injuries and ill health. a two thirds increase in real terms of employers' liability insurance costs over the past decade and a doubling of claims since 1985.

A Health and Safety Executive study found that uninsured losses from accidents (whether they result in personal injury or not) can cost anything between 8 and 36 times what an organisation normally insures for; in some cases making the difference between profit and loss.

Such losses, whether counted in human or financial terms can for the most part be avoided by applying good health and safety management. The path is not easy and there are no short cuts. It demands the commitment and involvement of senior management, transmitted down through the line.

To have successful health and safety management, Managers must be intent on improving their organisations health and safety performance.

Organisations which manage health and safety successfully display a number of common characteristics. They have their health and safety risks under control and can demonstrate a progressive improvement in their injury and ill health record.