Make Health Your Business

Make Health Your Business

"Nine times out of ten, when people's performance falls off it's because of health problems": that's the premise of this training video made for the Health and Safety Executive (HSE).

The title of this video is not, as it might at first appear, a call-out to aspiring capitalists looking to make a quick buck from the health industry. Instead it was made to support the Health and Safety Executive's 'Good Health is Good Business' campaign. It features Sir John Harvey-Jones, then a well-known businessman and television presenter who, in the BBC series Troubleshooter (tx 1990), gave ailing companies the benefit of his advice to help them turn around their prospects.

There's a stark opening statistic: "Every year nearly two and a quarter million people, that's one in every 11 (working people) will suffer from an illness caused by, or made worse, as a direct result of their work." This is resoundingly followed up with "Worse still, it needn't happen. Managers have it within their power to do something about it." The video goes on to illustrate how occupational health risks have been managed in a number of different companies and emphasises that measures needed to control health risks can often be simple and inexpensive.

This video was filmed in a wide range of businesses, mostly in the north west of England and London, including Maurice Nield & Sons, Manchester; Mediscreen, Royal Oldham Hospital; Dale Joinery, Rochdale; The Beacon Press, Uckfield; Bestway Tyres, Wigan; Worthington's Hair and Beauty, London; and the Jubilee Line Extension Project.

The tone of the well-intentioned narration may strike contemporary ears as paternalistic -particularly its references to employees as "your people." Harvey-Jones' closing line sums up the film's approach - and betrays a striking assumption about managers: "If you look after your people there's a sporting chance they'll look after you... if you're not looking after your people... you're not much of a man either."

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How We Worked

Explore how yesterday's workplaces were recorded on video - and were infiltrated by it

From the late 19th century, the earliest film cameras captured thronging workers leaving their factories, their faces filling the frames of early films. Ever since, the moving image has had a close relationship with the workplaces where so many of us spend so much of our lives. As both screen technologies and the patterns of work evolved across the 20th century this relationship grew ever more varied and complex. Film itself played every possible working role in relation to all parts of the economy, the public and the private sectors, the factory and the office - observing and documenting, dramatising and satirising, training and campaigning. In the videotape era it became ever easier for cameras to film in workplaces - and for moving images to be shown there, via players and monitors. This collection explores the working worlds of the recent past, marked by economic and technological change, a world so close to our own and yet so far away.

23 videos in this collection

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The A-Z of Work Experience

  • Chorlton-cum-Hardy
  • 2002
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Stationery Objects

  • 1992
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National Minimum Wage: Journey

  • 1999
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IT82: The Home

  • 1982
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Working Hard - Nottingham Division

  • 1980
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A Day in the Life of a Hospital Pharmacist

  • Worthing
  • 1998
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Make Health Your Business

  • Manchester
  • 1996
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The Goldsmiths' Company Lecture: Vivienne Becker

  • 2004
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Station Assistance Support on the London Underground

  • Westminster
  • 2002
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Disability Discrimination Act: Act Now

  • 2004
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Two World Famous Things About Batley

  • Batley
  • 2001
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Work, Rest, and Play

  • Morley
  • 2006
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The Goldsmiths' Company: a Silversmithing Demonstration

  • 1990
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Firewoman

  • Bradford
  • 1989
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One Man and a Van

  • Manchester
  • 2006
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Employment Centres

  • Belfast
  • 1989
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Your Career in the Hotel and Catering Industry

  • Manchester
  • 1985
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Work in Progress

  • Sheffield
  • 2007
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Park, Co Derry

  • 2012
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Ballybay, Co Monaghan

  • 2012
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30 Years of UTV

  • Belfast
  • 1989
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Farming Ulster

  • Cultra
  • 1992
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Everybody Out

  • 1979
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