UK employers move from awareness to implementation on suicide prevention

Workplace suicide prevention is moving up the corporate agenda. Seven months after the launch of BS 30480, the UK’s workplace suicide prevention standard, the British Safety Council says the guidance has been downloaded more than 12,000 times as employers look at how to turn awareness into action. The issue has also attracted political attention. In April MPs debated what more Government could do to support businesses implementing the standard. We’ll look at what employers should be doing now and hear from a health and safety expert.  

When we first covered BS 30480 last October it was still a new initiative and employers were being encouraged to familiarise themselves with the guidance. It was launched in November and since then the focus has switched from awareness to implementation. The British Safety Council says the standard has now been downloaded more than 12,000 times and notes that many organisations are looking for practical ways to move from awareness to action. To help with that, BSI and others have promoted a First Steps Guide designed to help employers begin implementing the standard in a structured way.

While the standard is not aimed at any one sector, it has attracted particular attention in construction, where workers are significantly more likely to die by suicide than the national average. It is intended to help employers identify and manage suicide risk, support people experiencing suicidal thoughts and respond appropriately when a suicide affects the workplace. It is aimed at HR, health and safety, occupational health and wellbeing teams, reflecting the fact that suicide prevention increasingly cuts across traditional organisational boundaries. The growing interest in the standard was reflected in a Westminster debate in April where MPs discussed how Government could encourage wider adoption. 

So what does implementation actually look like in practice? Earlier I caught up with health and safety expert Jonathan Cowlan who joined me by phone from Glasgow to discuss it and I began by asking him about the purpose of the standard:

Jonathan Cowlan: “The aim of the standard, I guess, is to give organisations something to hang their hat on, to say you can build this topic into your current approaches. So many organisations will be accredited to existing standards for health and safety, psychological safety, risk, and environment for example. The idea is that you can take the requirements of this standard and bolt them onto your existing management systems, but there will be specific things about the suicide topic, and that tends to be how organisations approach things. So I think from a regulator’s perspective the things which are in that standard will be looked at as industry good practice.”

Joe Glavina: “So what’s in the new standard, Jon, to help HR and health and safety professionals to help protect against suicide?”

Jonathan Cowlan: “The first bit is the prevention angle and how you can support people to have those risks minimised by good management but also, obviously, to assist with identification as well, which I think is a big issue and no one, frankly, is going have the answer to that. I think one thing to say about that sort of identification of management systems, I think I would expect those to look quite different in different types of sectors and organisations because of the different types of pressures people may be under. Engineering and manufacturing facilities are a lot different from working from an emergency service, for example. So I think it’s very much that although you’ve got this framework, the practical stuff will be led by industry standards and what seems to be appropriate. You’ve obviously then got dealing with things when they do come up in terms of what are we going to do about it? What process are we going to follow and not forgetting, at the end of the cycle, dealing with people that may have been affected, unfortunately, by a suicide within their workplace and looking at counselling measures, learning lessons and dealing with the individuals very close to that, and liaising with people like the family. I think those are all very sensible things to have in place but towards the far end of that process, obviously. That’s very emotional and sensitive territory and I think you’ve got to feel that as you go case by case. I don’t think you’re going to just have a process that deals with it.”

Joe Glavina: “Finally, Jon, anything else to add?”

Jonathan Cowlan: “Interestingly, the HSE does now have a suicide prevention page on their website. It talks about the stuff I’ve talked about, and it’s not too much about suicide, but there’s a clear message there that they recognize that there will be work related elements to this quite often. I think the other thing I would bring to organisations’ attention is that we are starting to see in coroner’s inquests, certainly in England and Wales, where the family have said, well, we think there could be a work-related element to this suicide and then obviously a coroner can direct, by their reported mechanisms, that steps need to be taken in terms of future prevention and also the HSE regularly turn up at coroner’s inquests. So you can see this becoming more in the focus of the regulator because it has to be in that mode and, again, I think that the things which organisationally people need to address and could contribute to those things will change but they need to be aware of them. So an example would be longer working hours driving for work, if there’s an element there and it pushes someone close to the edge and it doesn’t end well, you know, what is your occupational road risk policy, and what do you expect of people to do in those circumstances and manage their workload? You can see that as an example where a regulator may be interested in traditional safety, but also the topics in the British Standard.”

So the key takeaway for HR is that workplace suicide prevention is increasingly being viewed as a matter of risk management as well as employee wellbeing. As interest in BS 30480 continues to grow, employers may want to consider whether their existing HR, wellbeing and health and safety arrangements adequately address the risks identified in the standard. If you would like help reviewing your approach, or implementing the guidance in practice, please do contact Jonathan. His details are on the screen for you. 

- Link to British Safety Council article: ‘Taking the first steps towards confronting suicide in the workplace’