I was intrigued to see the Health and Safety Executive call for a more common sense approach on the HRMagazine website and for business leaders to show some support for the initiative. In one of my previous corporate lives, the facilities manager announced that employees cycling to work could no longer keep their wet cycling shoes under the benches in the office changing room - or hang our towels and jackets on the wall - to dry. If you've ever cycled to work in the Winter, you'll know why this rankled. When we queried this inconvenient decision and were told that, according to our company's Health and Safety consultants, a serious accident could occur if one of the shoes/towels was dislodged and an unsuspecting (aren't they always?) changing room user fell over it. Truth be told we agreed with him and felt that being damp was certainly best. After all, after negotiating blindly lumbering HGVs, towering buses, aggressive white vans and speed freak motor cyclists, often in the rain, on our daily commute, perched on a two wheel steel frame with no other form of protection than a foam helmet and two canvass gloves, it was certainly comforting to know that the HSE collective were protecting us from a horrible death at the hands of a rogue Shimano R300 cycling shoe.
