I think the efficacy of learning teams as a collaborative learning approach is directly related to downward pressure within a business to be a learning Organsiation. If the pressure is high, then the positive perception of gains to be made far out ways the argument that the people needed to undertake the activity are limited and the business is time poor. Therefore, the default is "a single investigator will do." This is a very unfortunate viewpoint as personally; I have seen fantastic results in a very short time utilizing the benefits of a leaning team's approach.
The juice is always worth the squeeze! Whether it be driving improvements in safety, quality, health or environmental impacts.

I think the evolution of AI will require the use in house knowledge and may become a part role of the IT manager like H&S is sometimes to HR until businesses understand how to right size the function to their context. I also think the speed of technology as it advances in this area has the potential to reduce expose of people to overly risk laden tasks. As a contractor I will be looking to use it as a team mate to clean up data for better understanding, management and allocation of resource. AI obviously has more exciting applications for asset owners in design and monitoring...

Research like all other sources of information is up for scrutiny and interpretation. I think Jop's research and indeed the article in safeguard is good and useful however its applicability to the industry as a whole is unclear. The use of take 5s in all their various forms is often a customer requirement which is hard to negotiate out of when you are a contractor trying to win work. The take 5 usefulness is subjective and like all tools requires some sort of expectation to be set out before use otherwise the process is likely to drift from what is expected. Knowledge of this and all the things that are wrong with the take five process is a reminder to "set you table before you eat" and lay out what is expected and why. Clutter reduction is easy to say but harder to do if the contractor customer relationship is fragile, rule bound, and cost driven rather than built on a trusting communicative relationship.

Amber, Is your business part of the Business Leaders Health & Safety Forum? if so they have some great resources and also benchmark within and across industry

Rob, have asked around work and the general consensus is the tools and appliances should still be tested and tagged.

Standardizing your question set will only add limited value even if the work is standardized and if it isn't then will add none. I think the key while be to encourage curiosity. I can send you a paper I wrote for our board and exec which is in word so you cand change, add, make better for your needs if it helps. Get in touch and i'll flick it through

Fatigue is a complex phenomenon. Dealing with it in this instance is possibly an opportunity to map out (maybe in a bow tie) what defenses you have in place that remove the opportunity of fatigue inside the workspace while acknowledging there are factors outside of work which contribute to fatigue. You need to think about where you actually have control and then introduce monitoring (in cab eye movement and others) around the fringe. While the law is the law creating an environment of honesty and openness might help you find second jobs in the current financial environment is larger than just the one individual. For us secondary employment is part of our negotiated employment agreement however the onus to report to work in a fit state is an employee duty.

Sounds like you need to have a conversation with @CK Rahi from Advance Diagnostics. She is incredibly helpful and knowledgeable on this topic

It really depends on the context of what you mean by "goes out of their way". If I assume you refer to a worker whose primary role has improving H&S as a secondary function. Then encouragement of their efforts should be recognized on a scale through recognition internally and possibly externally, an appropriately valued voucher, a bonus, or a promotion, depending on the gravity of the improvement.

Hi, Sorry i can't comment on the Post grad programme at SIT but the one at VIC UNI is awesome

Hi Jeanne,
The Business Leaders Safety Forum have a couple of papers on measuring what matters that are worth a read. The content and speed of reporting is something I am constantly working on and our reporting has evolved over the last 5 years. Reporting the positive is possible however you have to build the capacity or system to do so. We can currently report on percentage of work complete without damage to plant or injury to people but this like the LTIFR and is not really helpful unless you relate it to other tangible things like the complexity of work and ability to recover etc it will not be as useful as you want it to be.

How do you ensure understanding across the entire business with language and perception differences (black line, blueline)?

How do you achieve a balance between strategic direction from the leadership level and strategic input risk front line?

Andrew, great response and yes 3/4 at the moment. So let me give you another example then. Say you are an essential business and your asset is people. As parts of your asset get sick they cant be used but you choose to bring back (or at least offer) recently retired workers to maintain your capacity. In doing so you increase you risk exposure. Their are other things to consider also but I am interested in actual examples of others in where "in unprecedented times" they have removed rules to ensure they are maintaining there deliverables.

In my experience strategic H&S plans fail for two reasons,
1. They are too complex and no one can understand “the why” so no one buys in to the company direction
2. They are not written with the input of those actually undertaking the day to day action so not a reflection of what is really going on at the coal face.
We can all reference Iron Mike Tyson and say “everyone has a plan till they get punched in the face” trying to deflect why failure has happened and progress not made. But success shouldn’t depend on a rigid strategy either. Work evolves so why wouldn’t your H&S strategy. Simple, supple and supported is the easy road to incremental gains and therefore success.
The H&S strategy needs to be adaptive just like the good people within the business.

I think finding the time to think strategically is essential and part of a solution to get out of the reactionary cycle. A strategy is absolutely part of your WHY and needs to be a separate focus before the business folds it in as just park of what work is. It is hard but the juice is worth the squeeze!

Hi,
I think the most important thing for HSR’s to do is think outside their scope. H&S is just one part of what work is and to add value they need to learn Human Centred Design to learn how to ideate, iterate and intergrate ideas into solutions, the Cynefin framework to help understand resourcing and also how to pitch a business case on the whole cake not just the Safety slice.
Hope this helps

Respectfully yours
Matt

Bowtie, Risk Funnel, Cynefin Framework, Control effectiveness assessment, Work as done physical assessment are a few.
Tools that help you more than identify and categorize but sort, prioritize and treat

I would like to have a look please
mattdotsadgroveatthinkdletadotcodotnz
Happy to give feedback

Its only my opinion but the risk matrix used for this discussion is only part of the tool in its entirety and therefore makes us subject to one sided evidence and risk averse. The matrix actually has a right side (or blue side) which represents opportunity. This is seldom discussed but important when seeking balance in discussing a businesses risk appetite or tolerance. The other issue we open ourselves up to as professionals in using a risk matrix is it gives the perception risk is fixed and doesn't flex across the scale with influences experienced at the coal face that lead our people to make adaptive capacity based decisions. Risk is not static in a relationship with a hazard so.. having a toolbox of Risk assessment tools is best.