Maintaining a health and safety function can be demanding at the best of times. Having a competent person with the right experience and appropriate qualifications to manage health and safety within an organisation is a legal requirement. 

But staff leave, sickness absence, retirement, employee turnover and requests for part-time working can play havoc with a business’s ability to ensure everyone is safe and well at work. 

The question is — what can you do to mitigate these challenges to make sure a competent person is always performing this role? The answer, particularly for smaller companies, is often interim staff. These aren’t just ‘temps’, they’re experienced experts who boast many benefits beyond their flexibility and reduced cost. 

The benefits to your team and business

Interim health and safety support bridges the gap when organisations find themselves short of health and safety leadership. 

Rather than rush to find a replacement, interim support gives you the time to find the right person, while ensuring peace of mind that the role is in competent hands. 

Additionally, not only can they take on the health and safety role themselves, they offer an impartial perspective on operations and processes. They can also train junior staff to create a lasting legacy, and work with you to improve company culture. 

The cost is attractive compared with a full-time equivalent (FTE) and they can be with you for anything from a single day to more than a year. You can also use them to support specific projects, such as achieving ISO 45001 certification as you reduce work-related accidents.

We can help

Make UK can provide highly skilled people with deep sector experience who can hit the ground running, integrate into the business and deliver results quickly. We’re the UK’s voice for manufacturers, with a long-standing track record in training, consultancy, compliance, and policy work.

We can also work with you to develop your own staff’s competencies in parallel to providing interim support. By helping you uncover organisational potential you didn’t know you had, we can help you to ensure that you have a permanent solution as quickly as possible.

When you engage Make UK for interim EHS support, you get:

  • A bespoke solution for your brief
  • Professionals with a background in manufacturing
  • A partner who understands the pressures, risks, and your ambitions

We work with a broad mix of manufacturing organisations, typically between 100 and 500 employees, and pride ourselves on becoming an extension of your team.

A perfect storm

We’re seeing demand rise for our interim service and that’s because companies are more vulnerable than usual to outside factors. Persistent inflation, economic uncertainty weighing on confidence, and hikes in employer National Insurance Contributions are placing significant pressure on budgets and headcount. 

Health and safety is one of the areas most vulnerable to budget cuts — and is often among the first to be scaled back when savings need to be made. Yet this is precisely the moment when continuity and oversight are most important.

The risks are real

The statistics show you can’t afford to take your eye off the ball for a moment. 

  • Work-related health issues are blamed for 13,000 deaths a year in the UK
  • 1.7 million workers suffered from work-related ill health in 2023/24, with 609,000 of those being new cases
  • 46% of these cases were related to mental health
  • Work-related ill health cost the UK economy £14.5 billion in 2022/23 (more than double the cost of workplace injuries)

Former Bank of England chief economist Andy Haldane has even highlighted how spending on training fell 27% per employee between 2011 and 2022, and is now half the EU average.

Real-world impact

Barbara Hutton, a Health, Safety and Sustainability Consultant with Make UK, says it is soft skills as well as expertise that make the difference.

Interim staff will use their wealth of experience and knowledge to apply best practice and reuse methods that have worked previously.

You also need an abundance of soft skills (probably a better name would be 'power skills'), particularly good communication, assertiveness, and conflict resolution. It's important to understand the organisation's culture and business objectives so you can align with these to deliver the highest level of support possible.
Barbara Hutton
Barbara Hutton
Health, Safety and Sustainability Consultant with Make UK

Final thoughts

Your legal obligations are clearly spelled out in The Health and Safety at Work act, 1974, The Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 and other sets of regulations.

These haven’t changed for 25 years, but the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) is now intensifying its scrutiny of the manufacturing sector following its Prevention 2024 Summit. HSE’s three-year programme is designed to tackle emerging health and safety risks.

Don’t let staffing issues get in the way of ensuring legal compliance – close the gap and keep compliant with competent interim cover.

Interested in interim support?

Call us on 0808 168 5874 or email [email protected]. 

You can also read more about interim health and safety support in our earlier blog: 4 Things to think about when considering Interim Health and Safety Staff