What is the future of work?
To mark the 50th anniversary of the Health and Safety at Work Act, experts came together discuss its successes, challenges, and the future impact of new technologies and employee mental health on the workplace.
It has been 50 years since the introduction of the Health and Safety at Work Act. Is the workplace safer now than it was in 1974? What has been – and what will be – the impact of new technologies? Is the current regulatory framework fit for purpose? And what will the workplace look like in another fifty years from now?
To respond to these questions, the British Safety Council (BSC) welcomed a panel of experts from training, legal, technology, auditing and trade union backgrounds for a timely roundtable discussion.
The Health and Safety at Work Act 1974: progress and challenges
Opening the discussion, Nathan Baker – chair of the panel and Chief Executive of the Institute of Occupational Medicine – highlighted the progress made on workplace safety. Between 1974 and 2015, fatalities in the workplace dropped by 85 per cent, a “huge drop”, while non-fatal casualties dropped by a similar amount of 77 per cent over the same period.
But challenges remain. Baker pointed out that asbestos-related deaths are up tenfold and that 35m workdays are still lost every year due to ill health and injury – costing us £20.7bn in 2021/22.1 To put that into perspective, that’s around two-thirds of the United Kingdom’s annual defence budget. Janet Newsham – Chair of the Hazards Campaign at Greater Manchester Hazards Centre – expanded on workplace challenges, noting that 50,000 people still die every year due to exposure to hazardous and toxic substances. Newsham also raised the “ever-increasing mental health crisis,” highlighting that we still cannot be sure how many people die each year from work-related suicide. Similarly, Dee Arp, Chief Operating Officer of NEBOSH, drew attention to “all the mental health issues that we know are not significantly reported”.
From the discussion, there was agreement that the Health and Safety at Work Act has been better at addressing the ‘safety’ aspect than the less tangible ‘health’ aspect. While issues like physical injuries at work can be identified and addressed relatively easily, it is much harder to gauge employees’ wellbeing, quality of life, mental health, or stress levels. Phil Pinnington, Head of Audit and Consulting at the BSC, spoke about a "realignment of health and safety away from safety, safety, safety".
To improve employee wellbeing, Peter McGettrick, Chairman of BSC, reiterated the BSC’s call for a Minister for Wellbeing at the heart of government, as set out in its ‘Health, Safety and Wellbeing Manifesto’. Considering the estimated costs associated with workplace sickness and ill health, the BSC believes a ‘National Wellbeing Strategy’ would not only improve employee wellbeing but also drive economic growth. You can read the full manifesto here.
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YouGov survey: technology in the workplace
The discussion then turned to new technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) and their impact on the workplace. While Sean Elson, partner at the law firm Pinsent Masons, spoke positively of AI and its ability to free up time for lawyers to focus on more “thoughtful” work, the impact of new technologies on other workers – including those in the so-called gig economy – has been less positive. For example, Newsham highlighted the “tremendously bad” situation of some employers using technology to monitor their workers, including timing how long employees spend in the toilets.
It is perhaps for this reason that workers are less optimistic about the impact of new technologies on the workplace than their employers. Research commissioned by the BSC and carried out by YouGov found that while 63 per cent of employers said they were optimistic about the impact of AI, only 41 per cent of employees said the same.2 David Sharp, Founder and Managing Director of International Workplace, described the practice of employee surveillance as the “powerful looking at the disempowered”, calling for an eventual equalisation of power between the two.
However, the research also found that only around a quarter (26 per cent) of both employers and employees believe that AI would make their workplace less safe. When asked about the likelihood of their job being replaced or superseded by AI in the next 10 years, 68 per cent of employees thought it was unlikely, while only 23 per cent thought it was likely. Employees and employers were more equivocal regarding the impact of augmented and virtual reality on workplace safety. There is certainly optimism among employers and employees about the impact of new technologies, but more work is needed to address uncertainties around safety implications.
The Health and Safety at Work Act was written long before AI was even thought about. Is it well equipped to deal with the rise of new technologies and a society that places greater emphasis on employee mental health and wellbeing? Pinnington said that the Act is an “enabling act”, meaning the government can make changes as and when required, without the need for parliamentary approval. Arp, meanwhile, noted that safety has always been about the “whole person”, including their mental health and wellbeing, meaning that repeated revisions of the 1974 Act may not only be redundant but also confuse employers.
What next?
Whatever shape the Health and Safety at Work Act takes over the coming years, Newsham stressed that workers must be part of that conversation. The future, noted Baker, is not merely something that is “done to us” and called on us to “control the narrative”. That future, concludes Baker, can be bright, but we have to “make it so”.
You can read the full YouGov survey here. A short video of the roundtable can be found here.
1. British Safety Council (2024), 'Health, Safety and Wellbeing Manifesto'.
2. British Safety Council (2024), 'Employers and staff optimistic about impact of new technologies, despite uncertainty about safety – new British Safety Council survey'.
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