Introducing Managing Safely
Why is it important to Managing Safely?
Just for a moment, think about a serious accident happening in your organization. What would it mean to you and your organization? Think about the injured workers, their personal costs, pain and suffering and the effect on their colleagues, friends and families. Workers may have long hospital stays and may never work again.
It it’s shown that the accident happened because of a failure to manage health and safety risks in the organization, the regulator may take the action, which in turn may lead to prosecutions, fines and imprisonment. There may also be a personal injury claim form the injured person. May that doesn’t alarm you too much – you’re reasonably comfortable organization in financial terms, and the costs aren’t going to hit you to hard.
But what about the replacement labour, accident investigation, fees charged by the Regulator – for eg. in Great Britain, there is a also a fee for intervention (FFI)- downtime and increased insurance premiums? These are much greater than the costs of fines and workers compensation, Remember also that insurance won’t pay the costs of Criminal fines.
Consequently, there are three key reasons to manage safely:
Moral: It’s not acceptable for workers to suffer injury and ill health as a result of doing their jobs. Demonstrating that the organization cares about the health and safety of its staff will lead to a happier and more productive workforce.
Legal: Countries with safely and health laws in place usually require responsible people in organizations to assess reasonably foreseeable risks from the company’s activities and to put in place control measures that will reduce the risks – so far as is reasonable practicable. This is quite far; after all it’s the companies that create the risks!
Financial: As well as reducing the like-hood of fines and personal injury claims, managing health and safety can save money through reduce insurance premiums and safer and more effective ways of working. A reputation as a health and safety- conscious employer can also open doors for you in gaining new business, retaining and recruiting new staff.
Responsibility leads to accountability – you can delegate responsibility but you can’t give away your accountability, you’re ultimately accountable. Let’s go back to the opening scenario accident happening in your organization. Put yourself in the position of the manager of the worker who’s had an accident:
- You are accountable for assessing and managing the risks the employee is exploded to.
- You will have to arrange replacement labor, carry out incident investigation, report customers that their order have been delayed, and potentially liaise with enforcement officers, your insurance company and the media.
- You will to inform your worker’s family that they won’t be coming
The course will help you to identify your responsibilities and accountabilities.
You need to know hen you need to act, how to act, when not to act, when to pass things on to more senior managers, and when you’re out of your depth and need to call for help.