In 2018, RoSPA developed the RoSPA Awards Ambassador scheme, aiming to create a community of people who champion RoSPA’s goal to drive up well being and security requirements by way of the RoSPA’s Worldwide Well being and Security Awards. With greater than 27-years of expertise in OS&H administration, and over half of these spent working abroad, Stephen Storey, who relies in India, was properly positioned to be RoSPA’s first worldwide awards ambassador. We meet up with him to see what this implies for him.
Stephen Story has spent fifteen years working abroad in OS&H administration within the Center East and Asia. He’s at present company EHS head for Larsen & Toubro (L&T Heavy Civil) in India.
Stephen is a type of on the frontline. His private purpose is to drive up requirements throughout the board in a rustic the place security 
tradition is just not as mature as say Europe or the US. In his work with L&T, he’s in command of the security and wellbeing of hundreds of staff and contractors working in high-risk environments in heavy infrastructure sectors resembling tunnels, rail, roads, bridges, nuclear, hydropower, protection, ports and harbors .
The Indian well being and security scene presents its personal explicit challenges. Greater than 22 official languages are spoken within the nation, and it additionally has a transient workforce which poses an issue for these making an attempt to determine good OS&H observe and creating safer working environments. Nonetheless, Larsen & Toubro have labored exhausting to beat these obstacles and use the RoSPA Well being & Security Awards to show an enormous dedication to well being and security with constant entries into these worldwide awards for nearly 20 years, with over 100 entries throughout Larsen & Toubro in 2019.
“The workforce is extremely cell and seasonal and this produces a big, fast turnover of labour, which comes primarily from the agricultural sector.
“Employees typically have little or no expertise or understanding of complicated development and engineering work strategies, and the proper security behaviors that require implementation to allow accident prevention.
“Making that change and creating these talent units in a small window of time – earlier than the workforce leaves the initiatives to take up jobs exterior the development business of their native area – is a giant problem.”
So how is Stephen tackling these points?
He’s making an attempt to implement and develop a security tradition, not solely by way of his day-to-day work on the bottom however by way of making a agency dedication to staff and by in search of methods to additional develop his affect and promote finest security observe.
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hen commonly works with the Nationwide Security Council of India and the Worldwide Labor Group, amongst others, and each January Larsen & Toubro maintain a security month which reaches hundreds of stakeholders together with staff, contractors, suppliers, JV companions, and shoppers. With theme’s resembling ’embrace digital for a safer office’, which included putting in security apps, together with security inspection and near-miss apps on smartphones used within the office, and staff participating in digital actuality development security coaching, it’s clear that Stephen has his finger on the heart beat of all the newest developments and applied sciences in security.
“We additionally targeted on third-party coaching from worldwide our bodies in crane administration, operation and rigging, and scaffolding inspection and erection, and ran occupational well being campaigns on coronary heart assaults, strokes, diabetes and yoga health.”
In 2018, Stephen was chosen to be RoSPA’s very first worldwide awards ambassador.
“It’s an honor to be approached to assist such a prestigious world model in security,” Stephen says. “In accepting the position as ambassador it provides me a chance to offer one thing again to the occupational security and well being business and assist RoSPA in its general imaginative and prescient, mission and beliefs.”
Stephen intends to encourage extra organizations in India, by way of his networks, to enter the RoSPA Well being & Security Awards and assimilate the entry course of into their security methods, as Larsen & Toubro has carried out.
“Having the alternatives as I do to be invited to speak on varied boards, at conferences in India and Asia extra broadly, and to authorities and business boards, I can communicate to them of the worth a corporation can acquire from merely getting into the awards course of and understanding how they will enhance and ultimately be acknowledged as RoSPA winners.”
In case you are taken with turning into a part of the RoSPA Awards, go to www.rospa.com/awards and discover out extra about our internationally acknowledged award scheme.