By Joanna Weekes
There are so many aspects to creating and maintaining a safe working environment that sometimes it’s easy to get lost in it all. To truly succeed in creating a safe place of work, the key is to develop and implement an effective safety management system.
A safety management system combines all the different elements in your workplace that need attention to ensure you provide a safe working environment for everyone who enters it.
Safety management systems make health and safety an integral part of your business’s core operations. By designing, developing and implementing an effective safety management system, you will have methods for managing reporting, responsibilities, planning and resourcing to create a safer workplace.
Safety management systems have six elements:
- A safety plan
- Policies, procedures and processes.
- Training and induction.
- Monitoring.
- Supervision.
- Reporting.
Remember, it is not enough to simply adopt a satisfactory safety management system. You must also actively implement that system in your workplace. To do this, you must ensure that:
- Workers comply with procedures and instructions;
- Workers are appropriately trained; and
- Workers are subject to ongoing supervision.
1. Safety plan
A safety plan is a strategic action plan that forms part of the business plan. It analyses the current and prospective risk for a company and charts how the risks will be eradicated and controlled over a calendar period (the safety plan must have a budget).
This plan will ensure that there is a governance structure within your company that ensures every worker clearly understands their safety obligations (and how to comply) and is accountable to carry out those obligations.
2. Policies, procedures and processes
Policies, procedures and processes include all safety paper infrastructures within your company. This paperwork will describe all safety behaviour, expectations, record-keeping, incident reporting, and incident notification documentation.
3. Training and induction
Depending on the nature of your workplace (whether it is low-risk or high-risk), everyone who enters your workplace should receive training and induction on:
- The rules of your company;
- The rules of the site; and
- The rules of the location they are visiting.
The training content will depend on the level of risk the person is exposed to.
4. Monitoring
Your obligations to monitor your workplace depend on circ*mstances and need. Always consider the level of risk. The higher the risk, the more frequent and detailed the monitoring needs to be.
Other times when monitoring will be necessary include:
- To ensure that all risk has been covered by a new risk assessment that has been carried out due to a change in process, e.g. the installation of new workstations; and
- When an investigation takes place following an incident.
5. Supervision
The only way to ensure your workers are carrying out their safety obligations is to have adequate supervision.
The level of supervision required in your workplace will increase if the level of safety control put in place to reduce a risk is low, i.e. the less effective the control measure used, the higher the level of supervision necessary.
6. Reporting
The governance structure of your company needs safety reporting at all levels, not just at board level.
Your workers need to know what safety looks like – what’s going right and what’s going wrong. This can only occur when they receive safety feedback from you, e.g. how many hazards identification, the risk levels associated with those hazards and what control measures were implemented.
FAQs
According to the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), the key processes of a safety management system are hazard identification, occurrence reporting, risk management, performance measurement, and quality assurance.
What are the six characteristics of safety management system? ›
According to the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), the key processes of a safety management system are hazard identification, occurrence reporting, risk management, performance measurement, and quality assurance.
What are the 6 P's of safety? ›
Instead, Herrmann and her team created an improved nurse rounding program known as the "6 Ps" of patient care, or Pain, Personal Needs, Pulmonary Hygiene, Positions, Possessions and Place.
What are the elements of safety management system? ›
The four components of a SMS are:
Identifying the hazards. Assessing the risk. Analyzing the risk. Controlling the risk.
What are three of the six elements of a safety plan? ›
Six Elements that makes a Winning Safety Management System
- Element 01: A Safety Management Plan. Consider this your battle plan. ...
- Element 02: Policies and Procedures. ...
- Element 03: Training and Education. ...
- Element 04: Risk Management. ...
- Element 05: Incident Management. ...
- Element 06: Communication.
Provision of a safe workplace, safe equipment and safe systems of work, information, instruction, training and supervision. Risk assessment of all relevant workplace activities. Performance monitoring. Provision of adequate resources such as expert health and safety advice.
What are the elements of the safety management system outlined in ISO 45001? ›
Key elements include leadership commitment, worker participation, hazard identification and risk assessment, legal and regulatory compliance, emergency planning, incident investigation and continual improvement. ISO 45001 utilizes the Plan-Do-Check-Act methodology to systematically manage health and safety risks.
What are the 6 P's operations? ›
Thus to achieve Operations Excellence Place, People, Process, Product, Packaging and Positioning these six 'P's are important.
What are the 6 Ps of planning? ›
The 6 Ps of planning are Purpose, Philosophy, Promise, Policies, Plans, and Priorities. They define an organization's direction, beliefs, strengths, and strategies. Policies guide decision-making, plans set goals and actions, while priorities allocate limited resources.
What is the 6 hazard? ›
These are safety hazards, physical / environmental hazards, biological hazards (biohazards), chemical hazards, ergonomic hazards and psychosocial hazards. Take a look and think about the hazards in your own workplace.
A safety management system (SMS) is defined as an organization-wide process designed to manage safety risk in the workplace. A safety management system can be created to fit any business type and/or industry sector. Generally, effective SMS processes and procedures: Define how the organization manages risk.
How many elements are in process safety management? ›
A Platform Approach for Aligning the 14 Elements of Process Safety Management. While it's critical to apply interrelated approaches to managing hazards to prevent the release of highly hazardous chemicals, translating Process Safety Management intent into operational practice is no easy feat.
What is the key element of safety critical systems? ›
A typical safety critical embedded system has essentially two parts: sensors to gather data and software to process it. For a system to be safe, each of these must given due attention.
What is the most important element of safety? ›
1. Hazard Assessment. Perhaps the most critical element of workplace safety and an effective safety program is regular and honest safety audits to identify and correct workplace hazards.
What are the 5 elements of safety culture? ›
The Top Five Essential Elements for Creating a Strong Safety...
- Continually Updating Safety Precautions. ...
- Internal Safety Training for All Employees. ...
- External Training from Your Partner in Safety. ...
- Bringing Employees Together to Form a Safety Culture. ...
- Holding Each Other Accountable to Safety Standards.
Safety risk management: Identifying potential safety risks and implementing measures to mitigate them is a core element of SMS. Safety assurance: Ensuring that safety policies and procedures are consistently effective and identifying areas that need improvement.
What are the key functions of safety management system? ›
According to the (ICAO) International Civil Aviation Organization, occurrence reporting, hazard identification, risk mitigation, performance assessment, and quality assurance are the essential activities of a safety management system, according to the (ICAO) International Civil Aviation Organization.
Which of the following are characteristics of process safety management? ›
What is the Process Safety Management standard?
- Employee Participation.
- Process Safety Information (PSI)
- Process Hazard Analysis (PHA)
- Operating Procedures.
- Training.
- Contractors.
- Pre-startup Safety Review (PSSR)
- Mechanical Integrity (MI)
