Wherever your workplace is you have the right as an employee to work in a safe, clean and healthy environment. The risks in an office may not be as great as those on a construction site, a farm or a garage but there are risks nonetheless.

Your country (and State) laws dictate what the minimum standards of health, safety and environment (HSE) are for all workplaces and your employer is legally obliged to meet those standards. Failure indicates lack of thought, care and attention to the well-being of their employees. Dirty, unsafe offices show disrespect towards law, individual and customers. High accident rates, sick building syndrome, increased employee sick days, low productivity, reduced employee engagement and even staff retention problems can be attributed to poor attention to HSE issues by management.

However, the responsibility for HSE doesn't just rest on the sloping shoulders of management. It is the responsibility of all individuals, whether working, contracting or servicing the company in that building, to act in a manner which doesn't place themselves, other people or the building and its contents at risk of injury, death or damage.

You may say that HSE is nothing to do with you but ask yourself whether you have to raise or lower your personal standards to work at your employer's office. Consider the following to decide if HSE really is your business as an employee:

Do you want to work in a poorly ventilated office where the lights keep flickering as bulbs fail? Are you expected to carry on regardless or buy and fit your own bulbs?

Do you enjoy regular sick days with bugs and viruses that circle relentlessly around the building, repeatedly infecting all the staff? Are the restrooms cleaned regularly or do you elect for daily dehydration rather than use them?

Does part of your company induction scheme for new starters include pointing out the trailing cables, the loose tiles which are a trip hazard and giving tips to deal with erratic plumbing and how to hold the lift open with the fire extinguisher whilst loading boxes into it because there are no facilities management staff to fetch and carry deliveries?

Can you cope with back-ache, eye-strain, RSI in your wrists or migraines because the chairs can't be adjusted to suit the individual and nobody has undertaken a work-station assessment since you joined the company?

Can you cope with the grunge and gunk that appears insidiously when telephones and pcs are rarely

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