Our master risk register has a risk score but this is hidden when the site registers are created from the master version - for these very reasons. Sites are then provided with risk management training, which provides them with the tools and knowledge to take charge of managing risks relevant to their site and to use the site risk register for their site incident management and investigations. The H&S Team act as coaches and support site personnel to take ownership and learn (noting that there is a very fine line between empowerment and abandonment!!).

That's such a great approach!

YES!! But somehow very few safety people even really know how to go about creating a meaningful and useful risk register.

It is so helpful to start with understanding what you want the risk register to do for you and who is the intended audience - so often that gets lost at the start, and they end up with a jumbled mess that no one can use.

I am very fortunate to be working with a company at the moment that really gets this. They have a Master Risk Register that covers the entire organisation, and from which site risk registers are created - already that keeps everything strategically and operationally well aligned. Potential consequences are identified, but assessment of likelihood and risk score are kept in the background for the H&S Team to manage. Controls are identified in two main categories - engineering controls and administrative controls. Administrative controls list relevant SOPs, regulatory or industry standards, or elements such as training, The details are in the references listed under the controls. I have seen too many risk registers with a whole list of instructions that should rightly be in a relevant SOP or work instructions. Otherwise you end up with a document that is too complicated for workers to use and too cluttered for executives to use.

Site managers and HSRs are trained how to use the risk registers as a tool for incident investigation, hazard identification and risk management. They are responsible for reviewing and maintaining their own site register as well as their site H&S Plan, which is also aligned / a subset of the organisation's strategic H&S Plan.

Site risk registers and H&S Plans are accessible to all via the company's intranet.

Thank you!

Do you have a document?

We're talking sales guys driving Mazdas and drivers of heavy transport vehicles.

Firstly, ACC is an insurer. It helps to keep in mind that the ACC AEP framework was developed from the perspective of assessing risks related to the costs of injury claim, rather than strictly workplace safety. Its usefulness depends on what the organisation expects to get out of it.

I have worked with a number of companies that were in the AEP programme, and while having standards and audits does provide important feedback, it does seem that the whole programme often misses the mark about genuine safety matters in the workplace while overly relying on documentation. Documents are not necessarily the evidence we assume them to be; documents should not be taken at face value. especially if the systems and processes behind them are flawed.

For many companies, the focus is passing the audit rather than keeping people safe. It can lead to blind spots and a false sense of certainty. And unfortunately I have also come across a number of ACC auditors who also missed the point. That's why ACC eventually found that accreditation did not necessarily correlate with lower injury rates.

If you use the ACC AEP programme as one tool amongst your H&S management / improvement tools and understand its strengths, weaknesses and biases, then it could be useful. Just make sure you understand sufficiently what the ACC framework does and does not do.

Has anyone come across something similar for positioning the body while driving a vehicle?

I have emailed you.

I have emailed to you.

I have emailed you. Please feel free to contact me once you have had a chance to have a look at them - I would be happy to discuss further and answer any questions.

Exactly

What's your email address? You can send in a private message if you prefer. It would be easiest to email them to you.

It's always a useful strategy to start by ASKING rather than TELLING people. It means the person facilitating training has to do a bit more thinking and planning to get clear about their intended outcomes, then plan to ask the kind of questions that elicit personal experiences and insights. When I used to deliver safety workshops for Fletcher Building's "The Managers' Toolkit" series, right at the beginning I would ask them to pair up and discuss what was working well. After a few minutes, I would invite them to share with the larger group, write their comments on a whiteboard, and engage them in a bit of discussion. Then we did the same thing discussing what they thought could be improved.

With older, more experienced workers, more than any other group, the worst thing you can do is stand up and start trying to "teach" them. Instead, we can draw out and recognise their experience, adding insights and perspectives as we go. As much as anything, it's important to recognise that everyone is essentially doing the best they can with what they know. Many have been taught - either directly or indirectly - limited perspectives and unsafe practices, especially in times where their managers might have been more interested in financial gains than personal safety. In a way, if we start out by insinuating that they are "wrong", we will have lost them from the very beginning. It is much more helpful to "unpack" their experiences and aim to understand how they have arrived at their perspectives, then address those by facilitating discussions that lead them to new awareness and new possibilities. The more anyone tries to FORCE a person into a particular way of thinking or doing things, the more resistance will be created.

Some resources I constantly refer to include the 21 presuppositions applied in NLP to influence change - essentially useful assumptions for dealing with people - happy to share if anyone wants a copy. Another is Dilt's Logical Levels, which provides a great tool for problem-solving. Again, I am happy to share if anyone wants a copy. Another is the general principles of "ask, don't tell" (you just need to learn how to ask better questions and develop better listening skills), and one from the list of presuppositions, "Always ADD choice, never take it away." - this reduces resistance to change; we just need to do our homework to identify where options are appropriate and where they are not.

Another useful insight (essentially one of the presuppositions slightly modified) is to recognise that people are generally resistant because we are not meeting them where they are and we're trying to push too quickly, not recognising their needs for understanding and assimilating new information.

A lot depends on what you aim to get out of the course. When I worked for a previous employer, we ran a programme on risk management, rather than a course. What I mean by that was that we ran a half-fay workshop for managers to understand the concepts of risk, risk management, and the ISO standard for risk management at a high level, to give them enough understanding of both positive and negative risk and to get their support for operational personnel. People who would be carrying out workplace risk assessments attended a much more comprehensive and practical full day risk management workshop where we went much more deeply into HOW to conduct risk assessments. Then people were paired or teamed up and tasked to go and complete a workplace risk assessment, which they then brought back to another workshop (which I think was half a day) to go through their risk assessments, discuss, give / get feedback, etc so once we finished the full programme, everyone should have been clear about how to carry out risk assessments and confident about doing it.

My employer brought in a trainer to do this training, but the consultant contracted to do this delivery was not actually sufficiently conversant with either the concepts of risk management nor adult learning, so I had to work with the company to fill in the gaps. A lot of people (including many who really should know better) are familiar with the concepts of hazards but tend to treat risk management as the same when it is not.

Our approach of delivering a programme rather than a one-off training recognises the importance of ensuring that the people who are required to conduct risk assessments have appropriate management support, and that they have the opportunity to apply what they learn and get feedback so they finish up having verified for themselves, their colleagues and their managers that they are competent.

I agree - I watched the programme over the weekend, and it was clear from both the director / producer statements and the content itself that it was not the full story, and any storyteller will always have a particular perspective to present. But it's an interesting example of some of the challenges we face when trying to understand and manager risk.

It could work for the HSRs to have specific measurable goals - individual and team goals, aligned to the organisation's overall H&S goals, with some sort of celebration activity such as a meal or morning tea, with an accompanying programme for the CEO to recognise individual and team achievements.

As an aside note, the leadership training I've had noted that the most effective recognition is personal and specific, delivered from the person's direct manager, and generally emphasises appreciation for specific work done. So if the manager can personally, specifically and authentically THANK individuals and recognise their contribution in a meaningful way, that should have the most powerfully positive effect. And interestingly, that would also cost the least!!

Boards and senior managers definitely need to learn more about what actually constitutes "due diligence" and how to go about effectively conducting a sound due diligence review. There doesn't seem to be a lot of useful resources nor people who genuinely understand and know how to go about it (a great opportunity for you, perhaps?).

It seems there is the interesting conundrum about how we don't know what we don't know, and opportunistic consultants (including lawyers) will happily take an organisation's money and offer assurances yet how does an organisation know how to select advisors on such subjects when they know so little about it themselves, especially if presented with a slick sales pitch? :chin:

As adults in pursuit of 'mature' approaches to safety management systems, isn't there a potential hypocrisy of using 'rewards' to gain engagement - essentially offering bribes as extrinsic motivators - as compared with developing workplace culture that people WANT to be part of, and offering the opportunity to participate in something meaningful, worthwhile, that gives them something back in terms of their own personal and professional development? Wouldn't organisations be more likely to attract the right people if the motivation was intrinsic and came from resonance with what the organisation is trying to achieve for workplace safety?

It's good in theory, but such a move may well have the effect of further focusing Officer attention on avoiding legal liabilities (i.e., jail and fines) rather than genuinely addressing workplace safety needs, which typically manifests itself in micromanagement and interference with safety management activities. It also does little to build the foundations of trust so sorely needed to gain genuine traction in workplace safety.

My colleague has recommended "In a Flash" - the story of the Tongariro tragedy at Mangetepopo Hut. My colleague highlighted a few key points that stood out for him, including the fact that the group went out that day because they had 'nothing else to do' so they didn't need to be there anyway, and he said the teacher didn't want to try another route out because she had not yet been 'signed off' for it.

"This emotional, original drama tells the true story of the six Elim College students and their teacher who tragically lost their lives in a flash flood at Mangatepopo Gorge in April of 2008."
https://www.tvnz.co.nz/shows/in-a-flash