Planning for health and safety

The purpose of safety planning is to establish operational and strategic direction in respect of an orgnisation’s workplace health and safety effort. Safety planning enables the organisation to chart a course for the improvement or initiation of workplace health and safety. It is a critical element in the process of implementing an effective workplace health and safety system.

Safety plans should be completed with and aligned with a business plan in order to achieve the most effective result. We know that effective workplace health and safety is an element of a business performance. It will normally form a component of an organisation’s overall risk mitigation strategy and therefore should not be considered isolated from other business processes. Notwithstanding that, it is important for several reasons to ensure a safety plan is in place, including:

Moral/social practice norms;

Compliance with statutory obligations;

Risk mitigation.

Safety planning usually takes place after an audit of an organisation’s due diligence/statutory compliance and should become an important element of an organisation’s business plan.

The safety planning process may vary according to organisational “safety” maturity levels.

Small to medium (SME) business safety plans can be quite simple. Focusing on the who, what why, where and how the business will achieve its’ safety objectives. While larger organisation’s will follow a similar safety planning approach, the level of complexity, resources and goals to implement the processes will be quite different.

Our approach at Safetysure is to firstly understand the needs of the business. Is it growing, contracting or restructuring? Is it re-deploying people to alternative processes? Is it purchasing new plant and equipment? When we understand the business priorities and activities, we tailor technical safety plan requirements for our customers.

Safety plans implemented in isolation of other business areas seldom are effective. Our safety planning approach utilises inputs from all organisational areas as well as quantifiable organisational data that can be used to drive safety decisions.

Through understanding and integrating business priorities into workplace health and safety plans, we allow the organisation to grow from not only a safety perspective but a performance and profit perspective.