Questioning Performance: The Director's Essential Guide to Health, Safety and the Environment

Why directors and senior managers need this book:

• you have personal responsibilities for health, safety and environment
• your organisation faces a host of legal requirements and liabilities
• your company reputation could suffer if you don't tackle these issues - and you will feel the heat of the shareholder and stakeholder pressure, with bottom line consequences
• you need to take on board compelling moral and ethical reasons for getting these issues right
• it's not just about what's happening on your home turf - these issues have significant European and global dimensions.

There is no other book out there like this one - this definitive new title gives directors all they need to know about health, safety and the environment. It won't swamp you with technical detail of legal overkill, and it won't try to convert to you into an environmental evangelist or safety expert. But Questioning Performance will help senior people to gain assurance and discharge their responsibilities properly by enabling them to ask the right questions, understand the answers and see that they and their board take the best decisions about managing health, safety and environment risks.

Engaging in meaningful dialogue with expert advisers can be tough. This books builds a bridge between directors and expert professionals - employed in-house or consultants - and enable directors to develop effective and productive discussions with health, safety and environment practitioners, managers, trade union officials, safety reps and enforcers.

You may not be passionate about health, safety and the environment, and you may not think of these issues as your top priority - but as an individual, along with your company, you're legally responsible for managing the risks properly and can be held personally liable for the consequences of failure. Once on the statute books, the new corporate manslaughter law will add further weight to your health and safety responsibilities at least.

David Eves CB has over 45years' experience of health and safety, including 17 years as a board member of the Health and Safety Executive and 13 years as Deputy Director General of the HSE, with responsibility for 4,000 staff and a £200 million budget. He was Chief Inspector from 1985 to 2002, was Secretary General to the International Association of Labour Inspection, and has 30 years' experience of international negotiation and liaison with the EU and ILO.

The Rt Hon John Gummer, now Lord Deben, notched up a record as the UK's longest serving Secretary of State for the Environment and has 16 years of top level ministerial experience. Now running a corporate responsibility consultancy working with a portfolio of blue chip clients, he has consistently championed a 'middle way' between business and environmental concerns.