Focus on Health & Safety
Interview with Richard Hogben
Head of Health, Safety & Wellbeing Designate
My least favourite phrase is ‘For health and safety reasons’.
Congratulations on your appointment Richard.
What most excites you about this role? H & S performance is monitored and policies and
procedures are scrutinised and approved.
I’m excited to have the opportunity to help shape
the way we’ll manage health, safety and wellbeing
in Optivo. It’s been great to see the commitment of
the Designate Executive Team (DET) and Shadow
Board to prioritising the health and safety of our staff,
residents, and others affected by our work. We’re currently focussed
on ensuring the online
Occupational Safety
Health Environment System (OSHENS) is available to
all Optivo colleagues on Day One to report accidents,
incidents, near misses and work related ill-health. The
system will be accessible from the new intranet page,
is very intuitive and WON’T need a log-in to make
a report. Handy online guides will be available, and
the Health & Safety Team will provide support for any
queries.
Who have you been working with on the
Health & Safety Workstream?
Our Sponsor is Nick Apetroaie, who I will report into
under the new Optivo structure. Myself and Edward
Perier, Interim Head of Health & Safety at Viridian
are the Workstream leads, and we’ve had invaluable
support from Jane Porter, Neal Ackcral and Kerry
Tromanhauser.
What has the Health & Safety Workstream
come up with so far?
It’s been challenging, there are health and safety
aspects to everything we do, so it’s important we hit
the ground running as far as possible.
Our first task was to write a new Health & Safety
Policy as this is legally required for Day One. We
worked hard together to create something that
embraced the best practice from both partners, and
I’m pleased to say it’s been approved by Shadow
Board ready for signing by Paul Hackett.
We’ve also created Health & Safety Forum (HSF),
the main link between our people and the Board for
health and safety matters. Nick Apetroaie chaired
the first HSF meeting in March, which brought
together key senior managers from Viridian and
AmicusHorizon. Moving forward it will help ensure
Tell us a bit about yourself. What do you get
up to in your spare time outside of work?
Many people think if you work in health and
safety your life is one long risk assessment, but
I love watching live bands like Green Day and
Kasabian, and am a season ticket holder at
Arsenal which is definitely not the best for my
wellbeing! When it’s time to relax I love playing
the guitar (badly) and spending time with my
wife and two children, who are 15 and 11.
Finally, what’s your favourite quotation?
Am I allowed my least favourite phrase instead? It’s
definitely “For health and safety reasons”. If you
believe the stories, health and safety is all about
stopping people leading normal lives. I’m a great
believer in Sensible Risk Management, doing all we
can to protect people from real harm and suffering,
but not creating a totally risk-free world or generating
useless paperwork mountains.
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