This post was originally written as a newsletter article for ETNZ (Aug 2016).
Over the past two newsletters I’ve been sharing my approach to health and safety risk management, looking firstly at the identification of hazards and their risks, and secondly the decisions on how hazards and risk should be controlled and managed.
And now what you’ve all been waiting for, the final instalment in this risk management trilogy… “Monitoring: The risk strikes back!”
Ok, so we’ve been told we need to identify risks to health and safety in our workplace… and we’ve done that by systematically identifying, and writing down all the hazards we can across all our activities and workplaces. Tick.
Then we’ve formulated a plan of how we’re going to eliminate the risks that we can, and when we can’t eliminate, how we are going to minimise the risks to as low as possible. Tick.
Now what? We’ve written it all down? Tick. We’ve handed it in to the venue/client/other organisation that has asked for it… yep, all of that, tick. And….? What wait, there’s MORE?!?
Yes there is. You now actually have to apply your plans AND make sure they’re working. In legal terms you have a duty to “maintain effective controls”, making sure the controls you’ve decided on are fit for purpose, suitable for the nature and duration of the work, and applied correctly in the workplace.
You also have a duty to “review control measures”. For very small businesses this is fairly straight forward, as the person who wrote the risk management plan is often one of the people on the job applying it. But once you start to get a few layers of management into the mix, then the tech on the ground who’s been sent out in the van to do the job may not (a) know anything about a plan; (b) understand why it’s important; and/or (c) have resources to put the plan into action.
It’s not ok to send workers out on a job without having explained the safety plans and provided them with the adequate resources (including time) to apply them. And by not ok I mean if something goes wrong it will likely come back on you, no matter how good your paperwork is, and only a tiny bit (if at all) on your worker.
AND, you need to check that the control you decided on is actually practical to apply and is being applied. Someone needs to check that what you say is going to happen DOES happen. If there’s any issue with the plan, like it’s unworkable or doesn’t reduce the risk enough, then it needs to be re-thought and adjusted. Finally when there’s a change in circumstances that affects the risk, then the plans need to be checked to see if they’re still relevant.
Boom! That’s my version of risk management in a nutshell… or three.
Cathy Knowsley – HiViz Event Management www.hivizevents.co.nz (and ETNZ committee member).
