The emergence of a safety strategy.

In the decade and a half I have worked in the health and safety profession, the landscape of safety jobs has evolved, and the required skill set of safety professionals has expanded. The industry has moved away from solely technical-focused roles to more people-focussed roles. When scrolling through Seek reviewing safety job descriptions, it is now common to see “change management, program management, psychology, business management, strategic planning” included within the required skill set.

With this shift, we are seeing the creation of safety strategy jobs, clearly delineating between operational safety professionals and corporate safety professionals, which is broadening the health and safety profession.

Over the past year, I have been fortunate to present Probuild’s safety journey, Building Safety Greatness at various conferences. During the presentations, I would discuss the company’s safety strategy and the programs of work that support the strategy.

At the end of the presentations, there were the expected questions: “What were the challenges? How did you overcome them? How are you going to keep up the momentum?”. The question however that was most often asked surprised me – particularly the detailed response participants were after. That question was “How did you develop a safety strategy?”. I had naively assumed most organisations would have a safety strategy in place, because let’s be honest, most organisations use the catch phrase “safety is our number one priority”, or have a zero harm mission statement. I was shocked that there was little behind this to make safety happen.

There’s nothing wrong with the question. It being asked indicates more and more people are thinking about how do I/we/our organisation approach safety in a business sense (long term) rather than an operational sense (right now).

Why does safety need a strategy?

Initially, workplace health and safety practices were improved by litigious documentation and penalties for unsafe practices. The stick approach was the catalyst for organisations to improve the standard of safety at the workplace. Following this, the hierarchy of controls became the gateway for employers, eliminating risks and implementing engineering controls. In more recent times, we moved beyond compliance, with safety improved by digitisation, technology and focusing on the human aspect.

Operationally, we are reaching saturation with reduction of risk when it comes to elimination and engineering controls. Even with the implementation of some significant controls and technological advances, we are still experiencing workplace fatalities, illnesses and injuries.

Typically, our attention has been focused on solving individual hazards at the source, and not the big picture enterprise and industry risks. Enterprise risks, such as mental health and wellbeing, behaviours, employee engagement and diversity and inclusiveness, are now proving to be bigger risks to organisations than the day-to-day operational risks. Because of this, now more than ever, our organisations need a strategy that focuses on safety more broadly than at the immediate source.

An organisation’s strategy should set out its overall safety objective and then some targets they would like to achieve. A good example of a strategy is SafeWork Australia’s 2012-2022 Health and Safety Strategy. The strategy is Healthy, safe and productive working lives, with specific reduction targets established.

What’s your tactic?

Often people confuse strategy and tactics. Many organisations may have a strategy - “Goal Zero” for example - but do not have detailed actions in place of how they are going to achieve it.
We also see the opposite of this, for example “our strategy to improve safety is to train everyone in Certificate IV in OHS”.

Tactics are the backbone to a successful strategy. Tactics are specific actions used to achieve the strategic objective. In the safety world, tactics are generally the things or programs of work that are implemented to achieve the strategy.

If we are to look back at the SafeWork Australia example, some of the tactics to achieve these reduction targets include focusing on safe design, working with supply chains, conducting research and working with priority industries. The more tactics in your war chest the more likely your strategy is to succeed.

Considerable time should be given to designing the tactics required to achieve the strategy, and if a tactic is not generating the desired outcome, it can be modified or changed. Like an architect reviewing drawings and changing product specifications, it is okay to change your tactics.

How to develop your health and safety strategy.

You don’t have to have a fancy business degree, or work for a large consulting organisation, or use words with more than four syllables, or write pages and pages, to develop a strategy.

I spent three years developing, implementing and leading the Probuild Building Safety Greatness Strategy. In a 12 month period the Strategy resulted in significant decline in harm at our workplace, experiencing a decline in incidents by 20%, medical treatment by 30% and lost time injuries by 40%.

Upon reflection on the presentations I delivered, quite often I would discuss and show elements of our strategic process, but I never stepped the entire process. To answer the question, “how did you develop a safety strategy?” I have broken down the process into four stages, that is simple and relate able to most workplaces:

Organisation Understand your organisation’s strategic plan and targets.
Department Establish your organisation’s safety vision - what does the future of health and safety look like in the next 18-24 months? This is your mission statement. Be mindful that this relates to your organisations strategic plan, and is something that is aspirational and achievable.
Team, Targets & Tactics Identify the key stakeholders required to execute the strategy, establish the targets to be achieved, plan the tactics required to achieve the strategy; the targets should link back to the organisation’s targets.
Measure and Review Measure the performance of the tactical targets monthly, measure the strategic targets quarterly, review what is and isn’t working and make changes as required.

Some other useful tips:

Establish a stakeholder group who is accountable for the execution of the strategy, ensuring the group meets regularly.
Develop a communication plan, its important that everyone understands the strategy and targets to be achieved.
Use colloquial language, so people don’t feel overwhelmed, at Probuild we called our strategy a “road map” and our tactics “programs of work”.
We live in a fast paced world, don’t plan much further than two years ahead.

People’s curiosity and quest for improvement inspired me to provide a safety strategy plan on a page template. If you need a helping hand or have any questions, drop me an email.