What do you think of your health and safety management team ? Or, your top managements interaction with health and safety ? Are they strong, effective and visible leaders ? Do they show demonstrable commitment to the health, safety and welfare of the employees in their business ?
Prioritizing and protecting the health and safety of employees is not just a legal duty, it is also a strong indicator that a company is likely to create a sustainable and profitable business.
Strong and effectuce health and safety leadership provides the direction, encouragement and inspiration required to motivate employees to achieve organisational success. Management in generals primary function is to organise roles. Coordinating the efforts of the people and the allocation of resources to maximise efficiency in achieving identified goals. This is no different within the health and safety function.
So lets start with that element and look at how roles and responsibilities should function at an optimum level for health and safety within the company.
Roles and Responsibilities of the Company
- To provide strong and active occupational health and safety leadership
- To demonstrate a visible and active commitment towards occupational health and safety leadership
- To establish management orgaization to ensure effective occupational health and safety communication is relayed to all staff
- To integrate health and safety into all business decisions
- To identify and manage occupational occupational health and safety risks
- To obtain competent external occupational health and safety advice (such as from an external Consultant, like Corporate OHS) if the required level of competency is not available in house
- To ensure there is a process for monitoring, reporting and reviewing occupational health and safety performance
- To provide adequate resources and budget to manage health and safety
What does Effective Commitment and Leadership Look Like in HSE ?
Strong comittment shown by Management will produce high levels of motivation and concern for occupational health and safety at all levels throughout a company. Commitment can be measured by the amount of resources and support allocated to the management of health and safety. And also the priority given to health and safety over production and costs. In addition, management must be seen to follow their words through with actions. Actions include:
- Developing and communicating an effective occupational health and safety management strategy
- Developing robust health and safety management systems
- Ensuring that health and safety issues are always on the agenda at top management meetings
- Providing health and safety awareness training to all leaders
- Providing adequate occupational health and safety resources to implement effective hazard reduction measures
- Management involvement in risk management processes such as health and safety risk assessments
- Management monitoring the performance of health and safety management systems
- Management setting a good example by following all safety procedures at all times
- Ensuring the motivation of employees via ensuring their consultation and involvement in decisions on health and safety issues and problems
How to Set a Plan for Leadership Commitment
Planning for effective commitment and leadership from Managers and leaders involves agreeing how top management will establish effective health and safety management in the form of a written plan and policy. This shouldd identify where the company is now as regards the subject. And where they want to be. Essential to this are risk assessments; top management understanding the significant risks generated by the companies work activities.
The policy should include at a minumum:
- A commitment to providing healthy and safety places of work
- Procedures to prevent injuries and ill-health from work activities
- A commitment to reducing and eliminating hazards and occupational safety and health risks
- A commitment to fulfiling legal and regulatory requirements
- A framework for setting occupational safety and health objectives
- A commitment to the continual improvement of the health and safety management system
- A commitment to employee consultation and involvement as regards health and safety
- Plan for changes that may affect health and saftey within the company such as: introduction of new HSE legislation, new work practices, recruitment of additional employees, procurement of new products and services
The plan should further set out how to minimize injury and ill health within the company with top management accepting the responsibility should anything go wrong.
Demonstrating Leadership
So we’ve set our plan and made our first step.How do we follow through ? How do we now demonstrate leadership commitment ?
- Host regular safety meetings
- Regularly attend safety walks
- Follow up on any actions that arise
- Be involved in setting occupational health and safety objectives
- Be involved in identifying the main risks and communicating those risks to employees
- Where incidents occur, participate in investigations and take leading roles
If you are looking for an occupational health and safety provider in the UAE
Corporate OHS is a Health and Safety Consultancy services provider whose HSE Consultants offer expert resources and superior performance to give you greater results.
We specialize in creating workable, user friendly solutions aligned to your business activities, operations and budget.
Our range of health and safety consultancy services includes;
- Health and Safety Risk Assessments
- Hazard identification and control measure implementation
- Gap Analysis
- Audits and compliance audits
- HSE management system development, implementation and review including locally compliant systems such as OSHAD or OSHJ and/or accredited systems such as ISO 45001, ISO 14001, ISO 9001
- HSE legal compliance reviews and assistance
- Accident investigations
- Business continuity and crisis management
- Long term or project based HSE outsourcing
- Flexible monthly support retainers giving access to HSE service without the burden of a permanent cost
To find out more about our services, please visit our website www.corporateohs.com or send an email to enquiries@corporateohs.com, or call 00 971 4 550 7862.