OSHMS Manual 2.02 of 9 : Planning for Safety

OSHMS Manual
previous : Part 2.01 - Planning for Safety (Introduction)

2.02 Safety Management Plan

‘Safety planning’ must be considered as the methodology employed to manage the risks associated with the OSH in the business operations. The planning can be, and often is, overlapped in other areas of the business plan. Since OSH includes looking out for potential damage, as well as injury and illness, a safety plan will consider contingencies associated with failures in the workplace equipment, etc.

For example, a simple contingency plan for smaller operators is to arrange to meet with other local businesses of approximately the same size, and discuss contingency computer back-up plans should failures occur in one or another of the facilities (eg fire, water, power damage). The concept being that back-up is ‘off-site’, reasonably secure and it is unlikely both businesses will have failures at exactly the same time. Even very small operators can participate with simple exchanges and storage of back-up memory disks. This provides a local ‘offsite’ access point that might even allow a business to get back on its feet with only a day or two lost in records retrieval.

The Safety Management Plan (SMP) should be drawn up with the same dedication as financial and marketing plans. The SMP deserves similar focus and attention and should be seen as a means of protection of financial and marketing plans. For example, how devastating is it to the morale of a sales department to discover the profit of RM200,000 they made on two million ringgits worth of sales (say a 10% margin) is now poured into State revenue and increased workers compensation premiums because of a corporate OSH fine and costs relating to an oversight in the production department’s OSH procedures?

The SMP will consider all the elements of the workplace and its stakeholders. It will encompass the application of consultation and discussion. It also will allow for the unhindered passage of ‘bad news’ up, and down, the communications chain (obviously ‘good news’, too… but ‘bad’ news generally does not travel well!).

The SMP must be accessible and realistic. The personnel at each ‘user’ level of the SMP need to be able to understand what is expected of them and their fellow stakeholders. This infers the need for appropriate training in the comprehension and appropriate application of the SMP. For example, upper management will need a broad overview of the various legislative requirements to be negotiated; rank-and-file employees will need safe operating instructions relating to their designated tasks. Implicit, too, are the needs for regular access to (ideally) the latest in information and technology likely to apply at each level of the organisation. Occasionally, this may need to be actively accessed via an external third-party specialist in the field. An example where legislative needs regularly change is in the field of workplace injury, its reporting and its management; an example of technological change with implications for damage would be the combination of modern electro-technology and static electricity – where electronics systems can be destroyed through poor – or inappropriate - application of static electricity controls (static is still considered a relatively new science, with the usual qualitive (conjecture) vs. quantitive (empirical) connotations.

A SMP is prone to the same rules as other parts of the workplace – whether systemic or plant and/or equipment, whether goods and/or services: ‘every system is in a state of decay without an input of energy’. As with many other parts of the workplace system, the strength of pro-active safety management planning is in its application. If, after the plan assists a firm to meet regulatory requirements on the short-term, it is then left to gather dust on shelves and bookcases into the long-term, with no further review, evaluation and application, the systems the SMP is meant to protect will prematurely fail.

The flow-chart below provides an example of how a larger organisation might approach the management of its safety. However, the smaller business, too, can take advice from the suggestions. Note the chart can be applied to non-safety issues also.

Safety Management Systems (SMS)

A generic Safety Management System (Patrick Hudson Safety Management and Safety Culture The Long, Hard and Winding Road Paper to The First National Conference on Occupational Health and Safety Management Systems, July 2000 WorkCover NSW 2001):

“A number of important elements are specified that have to do with:

• the setting of policy and creation of plans and organisational capacity to realise that policy (PLAN)
• the analysis of hazards and effects leading to planning and implementation of those plans in order to manage the risks (DO)
• the control on the effective performance of those steps (CHECK)
• Finally, a number of feedback loops are specified to see where the information gained should be sent (FEEDBACK).”

next : Part 2.03 - Sample of XYZ SMP