Assessing changes will lead to continual improvement
Question: Our workplace developed a safety management policy several years ago and we are about to revise it. Is there any area of focus we should pay attention to?
Answer: The basis of an organizational safety management system is the management of hazards and the associated risks to workers. And while safety practitioners and professionals have this as a goal, many times we are dealing with accidents, incidents, regulation changes and issues in our organizations that set the priority of activity with a theme of fix what’s broken.
So how do we get back to focusing on prevention? A model approach should be followed with four distinct steps: develop or identify tools for assessing hazards and resulting risks to workers, evaluate the risks utilizing various sources of information, develop and implement prevention strategies or controls to manage the risk, and evaluate the progress.
Methods to assess risk
The first step requires the identification or development of the tools to be used for setting the priority for action. There are a wide variety of methods to assess the risk of harm or loss however high quality processes all have three common elements:
• standard method of assessment — utilizing a method that can be repeated
• standardized definitions — a common understanding of each element being assessed
• involvement of those accountable for the work — workers and their supervisors understand the complexity and variability of the activities being assessed.
Developing a standardized methodology with these common elements allows for the assessment of risk across a diverse group of activities with a level of commonality to set priorities.
Gathering information
The next step is to gather the information necessary to conduct an assessment of hazards and related risks within an organization. While the preferred approach would be to assess all activity within the scope of work, this step is generally a very large and time-consuming task.
Because of this concern, the program may start with an assessment of known issues and incidents through various sources of information, including safety committee meeting minutes, injury reports, near miss reports, workplace inspection results and first aid reports. All of these sources of information will identify hazards and risks that have occurred within the workplace.
A key element in the risk assessment process is the step to identify, and then evaluate, the hierarchy of controls in place. The range of controls identified, (starting with elimination, through substitution, engineering, administrative and personal protective equipment) provide the opportunity to evaluate the effectiveness of the controls utilized and the opportunity to introduce additional controls.
The evaluation process should involve answering a number of questions including:
• Are there any controls in place for the risk identified?
• Are the controls appropriate for the risk of harm? (a sign, which is an administrative control) identifying a pinch hazard or utilizing guarding (an engineering control) to separate workers from the pinch hazard)
• Are the controls being communicated to the appropriate workers and supervisors?
• Are controls and related processes being followed?
• What suggestions do workers and supervisors have for creating/modifying controls to be more effective?
These and other questions will form the basis for developing and implementing the prevention strategy and plan steps necessary to address areas of weakness. Having engaged workers and supervisors in identifying opportunities for change will also provide the opportunity to engage them in the process of implementing the changes identified.
Evaluation
The final step is to evaluate the progress being made including ensuring the changes implemented are creating the desired effect of reducing the risk of harm to workers. Along with this, it is important to ask the following question: Were there any new risks created during the process? If so, the following should be asked: Do we have appropriate controls in place for those new risks?
Like any change project, the process of identifying risks and prevention strategies need to be assessed. Utilizing processes from the discipline of project management, assessing the overall process and lessons learned will assist to continually improve the processes followed for identifying, developing, implementing and managing hazards and associated risks to workers and further developing to organizations safety management system.
Dylan Short is the managing director of The Redlands Group, an Oakville, Ont.-based safety and risk consultation company. Short is also the director of educational services group with the Canadian Society of Safety Engineering. He can be reached at [email protected] or 416 843-7167.
