The person responsible for health & safety management within a company, business or organisation has to be a little like the Roman god Janus, (after which the month of January is named). Janus was a two-faced god, but this doesn't mean that he was nice to your face and whined about you behind your back.
In fact one of his faces always looked to the future, and the other always looked back at the past. This is why January, the point at which last year and next year join, is so named. But what does this have to do with health & safety management?
The problem for most people responsible for the implementation of a safety management system is that they are required, at any time, to both look into the future, visualising needs, problems, expansions, developments, changes and problems which might all affect the choice of and implementation of any safety management system.
But at the same time they are often required to look over the past by piecing together a full and reliable audit of all health & safety management checks and reports which have been accumulated over the past in order to identify safety issues which may need addressing.
This need to see, observe and analyse both the past and the future is essential if any health & safety management system is to be successful. However, in too many cases only one 'face' seems to be being used.
By only focussing on audits, or by only trying to look ahead the safety management system is likely to be doomed to failure. Yet having the correct safety management system in place is essential, since so much depends upon not only being able to put together a complete audit at any time, but also have a system in place which can grow organically as the business and its needs grow.
Few businesses remain static, and whether the business expands physically, or in terms of the number of employees, the type of equipment being used or the processes being carried out, the demands placed on the existing health & safety management system will change. Any safety management system which is not able to expand, grow and develop in this organic way is almost certainly likely to fail, and this will prevent effective auditing, as well as increasing the likelihood of an accident which ought to have been prevented.
If an accident does occur, and it can be demonstrated that the safety management system in place was inappropriate, ineffective or absent entirely, then the business will be legally culpable, and this could cost a good deal of money, as well as the reputation of the company and those in management.
In order to tackle the problem of health & safety management systems being unsuitable for certain aspects of the business, what many people have done is either to introduce a new safety management system to apply only to that particular aspect of the business, or develop their own in-house system.
However, where a company operates multiple health & safety management systems what tends to happen is that confusion and misunderstanding creeps in. Shortcuts start being taken, safety checks circumvented and very quickly the safety management system becomes worthless, and the resulting information collected for your safety audit hopelessly incomplete and utterly unreliable.
It becomes impossible to gauge accurately the level of safety within the business, and when an accident does occur, trying to trace the audit trail back will be all but impossible,. What is needed is a consistent health & safety management system which can quickly and easily be deployed across the whole business but which offers enough variety of modules and solutions that it is capable of growing organically with your company.
It is also important that any safety management system is tamper proof, and provides very clear, unmissable warnings, check lists and procedures for the checking of safety equipment and operating procedures. As well as being capable of organic growth and providing a consistent and secure system of safety management products and procedures, an effective safety management system should also have built into it a facility for quickly and easily collating this information for the purpose of an audit.
In this way, it is possible to look back over safety checks and procedures to see clearly the status of the company's safety over the past, as well as being confident that the health & safety management system will be compatible with any future business developments or expansions. For just such a system, have a look at the 'Good To Go' safety management system, available from Intersafety.
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