Health and Safety Leadership and Engagement Opportunities Presented by Covid-19

The COVID-19 pandemic has seen health and safety professionals step up and take charge with the kind of leadership skills they have been developing for years. We are used to pragmatically implementing crucial new health and safety instructions to keep businesses moving and keep people safe. We will look at examples of leadership and engagement. That role has never been more essential.

Many HSPs are under great pressure of work and face changes in ways of working. I have been featuring a series of questions this week, like the above, to stimulate thought culminating in this article which is influenced by the response I have received. Thank you all for your participation and the interesting discussions. So, what opportunities exist for strengthening the role of health and safety and what new ways of working can we move towards?

A Digital Revolution

Until recently half of all workers had never worked from home. Now even banks, courts, parliaments and doctors are teleworking, rock stars are doing concerts from home and you speak to your granny on Zoom. The statistics from Germany are reflected throughout Europe and the rest of the Western world. This rate of adoption is historic, effectively a digital revolution and it inevitably will affect the way we work.

Covid-19 Presents us with a Leadership Opportunity

The HSE and the Government want us to keep business open with certain numerous exceptions. Keeping businesses open in the current situation requires:

• Finding pragmatic solutions to infection control
• Influencing management and workers to adopt the solutions effectively so that business can carry on

Health and safety practitioners are working within World Health Organization, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and governmental guidelines including the HSE website, to develop innovative solutions. Digital platforms like LinkedIn and YouTube are sharing them, giving examples of Infection Control Wardens, the invention of screens and barriers, markings on floors and walls, office one-way systems and many new procedures. @Marisa Firkins post stood out as an example. The comments pointed us towards safe operating procedures allowing businesses that were closed reopening to the extent appropriate such as Construction Sector - Site Operating Procedures, Protecting Your Workforce During Coronavirus (Covid-19) issued by the Construction Leadership Council based on advice by Public Health England.

IOSH have also run webinars and programs to generate discussion and share information, The Safeopedia site is sharing innovation such as this “safety moment” as have other safety organisations and consultancies. 

Once we think we have solutions, how can we influence organisations to implement them? Having influence (for safety professionals) often meant site visiting. This may not be practical or even desirable in the future and there will be a move towards remote forms of health and safety management.

The global Covid-19 response provides a benchmark example of engagement. Once people got the message, they quickly changed their behaviour so much it has impacted their finances and the global economy more than anything in modern history. I have never seen a more dramatic influence on behaviour than this.

Can we influence organisations and secure engagement from our home offices?

Remote Health and Safety Management

You might be in firefighting mode providing day to day input responding to the immediate needs of your organisation or client. However, the context in which we operate has changed, so we need to review the effectiveness of the safety management system to strengthen it. Rather than turning to digital enterprise management software the principles in HSG 65 or ISO 45001 are key.

Start with the Objectives and Policies

Look at your organisation in which you work, or your clients, and review the following:

• Leadership and management commitment, is there active engagement and accountability of top management.
• Are the policies and procedures up to date? (Take the opportunity to strengthen them)
• Focus on legal requirements and the needs and expectations for workers and other interested parties to establish and review safe system of work
• Gather objective data to rate compliance with safe working practices
• Understand non-compliance.

Example of Strengthening – Job Description

As an example of how documentation should be strengthened around health and safety consider the job description of a supermarket manager. Is health and safety buried somewhere halfway through the page? Health and safety has become one of the first objectives of the store manager and all management in the store because it is central to keeping the business open and avoiding sickness and legal risks. Ask the organisation to consider raising the profile of the safety element of the job description and include following infection control procedures to secure increased engagement.

The Tools of the Digital Revolution

The first phase of change may be to attempt to use new tools with the old way of working. Experienced practitioners are having someone carry a mobile phone around to do a visit by camera. Many auditing standards have immediately adapted to remote audits including ISO. So, we can be more three dimensional than just carrying a camera around. Why not really involve people in the audit by providing them with the tools mentioned below.

Consultant visits

If there is no substitute for an on-site visit this could be provided by a suitably qualified local contractor rather than by us travelling. If so, they will need a clear remit to make such an exercise effective. Rather than let them dictate the audit give them the format of the audit report form consistency with your systems, otherwise you will find it harder to interpret it and you might find it padded with caveats.

Excel spreadsheets

There is nothing wrong with an Excel spreadsheet. If it is designed well to not only enable you to gather the inspection data but also to create an integrated dashboard of where risk is to be found, it becomes in itself an almost complete tool for a certain level of data.

The problems emerge as you try and involve others or send such tools to others to collect data. The number of issues or sites grow or when you want to add photographs or documents. They are also time consuming to format for a polished look, and they cannot be used on a small device.

Apps on Smartphones

Apps are proliferating. Some are more useful than others depending how whether they have the flexibility to easily edit the checklists to respond to changes in the audit in the field.

Auto dictation is also excellent. Being able to complete your inspection, including determining all of the wording on the premises, is powerful. It means that few, if any, additional findings will be added after to the concluding phase of the audit on site. It also means that no additional time is required for report writing which increases the efficiency of the inspection process.

Having inspection forms and checklists that are fully featured with signature and photograph and document fields time stamps, GPS stamps, barcode readers and so on gives you powerful inspection capabilities. It is possible to design these even for the average phone, enabling you to avoid additional hardware or sharing of devices when engaging the workforce in field data collection, as they can simply download the app on their own phones and, after training in what you want them to do, start using it immediately. Disseminate simple checklists and safety investigation forms onto each worker’s smartphone. This gives good proactive information from all parts of the operation including helpful photographs or videos of non-compliance or complex issues for the management and safety team to address.

For more formal evidence gathering, such as for a safety investigation, an ISO standard audit, or a major audit, train good managers to cross audit other managers’ areas in pairs. It shares good practice and positive competition.

Data Management

I am repeatedly surprised that health and safety practitioners are charmed by the numerous safety management systems that crowd every health and safety conference exhibition Hall. You no longer need enterprise software to get forms and dashboards. These are already available on your Microsoft, Google or other office suite. Adopting a new safety management platform throughout an organization is a huge task, and an expensive one, particularly as the cost for each login grows annually because you are trapped in the system.

It is far better to learn how to use the existing tools which are common to any organization and which will equip you for the rocky ride ahead as organisations merge, or if cost saving reduces your budget. From my experience in managing a global organization there is only one tool or item of additional software needed and that is the handheld app, preferably one that goes on a smartphone as mentioned above.

If you ever get to the stage of handling huge amounts of data, then a Microsoft Power BI subscription will enable you to manipulate it very impressively, with a little training, but most of us are unlikely to need that.

Once you have your data managed consistently either in Excel spreadsheets or on databases, then having the flexibility to display and interrogate it as you like can provide exceptional insights.

Remote Training

Training influences adoption of change and helps create an organizational culture. Training options have reduced, but virtual classrooms beat recorded online training. We must enhance the quality of virtual classroom training using tools that make it more interesting.

Conclusion

Allow your organisation to fully benefit from your leadership skills and experience in interpreting rules and bringing change allowing work to safely take place. Engage on LinkedIn and other platforms to share your experience. Make a full review of your organizations structure to ensure health and safety is a core value and reflected in all systems of control including job descriptions. Take full advantage of the digital revolution to communicate with all levels in the organisation engaging them on the safety mission.

Your work may save lives and your business and provide the most rewarding time of your career.