How can I achieve cost effective safety management?
Health and safety management is a technical area where organisations often have difficulty with balancing costs against risk.
Efficiency improvement programmes often focus on tehcnical delivery rather than identifying and tackling 'root causes'. As a result they are seldom successful. Real imrpovement is achieveed by understanding and addressing such issues as:
- Lack of operational management understanding or acceptance of roles
- Lack of knowledge and confidence to challenge cost versus risk balance
- Duplication, or more, of effort between business units
- Organisation culture and values that do not match corporate safety policies and strategies
There are several steps to achieving efficient and cost effective safety management, before specific technical issues are considered, such as:
- Understanding the current health and safety vision, values, beliefs and behaviours in the organisation.
- Identifying where value improvement can be achieved in cost and/or performance
- Prioritising actions based on the return: risk ratio against effort
For example, for a large water company, to reduce costs and improve safety, Turner & Townsend carried out safety culture assessments of contractors and suppliers to identify those in which safety was not embedded in the organisation values. These were most likely to flout safety rules, and so the assessments provided ‘early warning’ and the ability to target checks and controls where they would be most beneficial.
Contact us for more information on how Turner & Townsend can help you maximise the value you obtain from your health and safety management programmes and activities