Less is more.
Management systems comprise a set of Policies and Procedures which set out how to go about business. Ideally, they are structured, simple and enable business optimisation. Well designed and implemented management systems should assist employees with the day-to-day operations of their business.
Unfortunately, over time, management systems have become overly complex, often seen as a burden by employees who perceive them as unnecessary red tape. I hear countless excuses from safety professionals as to why systems are so big. Often I hear “ the criteria states we need a procedure for this” or “as a result of this incident we created procedure xyz”. Without dismissing the “criteria” or the findings from incident investigating, I am advocating some smarts around how we respond to these to minimise the clutter and remove redundant processes and procedures.
With regards to Safety Management Systems, if we were given the luxury of starting from scratch, would we design the same system that we currently have in place, or would the system be a lot different? Would the systems be bigger or smaller? Would there be more procedures or less? If you were to ask these questions to a “user” of the system, how would they answer?
In this post, I am going to draw on what some would perceive as a non-traditional approach to decluttering management systems.
The KonMari Method.
Netflix buffs may be familiar with world renowned tidying expert, Marie Kondo. Marie is the author of the international best seller The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. Marie helps people to clear out the clutter in their life in order to spark joy.
Marie has a simple method for tidying. She organises by category. There are five categories, tidied in a specific order: clothing, books, paper, komono (kitchen, bathroom, garage, miscellaneous) and sentimental items.
To accompany the categories, Marie has six basic rules for tidying:
1. Commit yourself to tidying
2. Imagine your ideal lifestyle
3. Finish discarding first
4. Tidy by category, not by location
5. Follow the right order
6. Ask yourself if it sparks joy
People around the world have been drawn to this philosophy not only due to its effectiveness, but also because it places great importance on being mindful, introspective and forward looking.
If we applied this theory to a safety management system I would envisage the five categories to be: legislation, standards, industry standards, company standards and legacy documentation.
Looking at the rules from a safety management system perspective they can be translated into:
1. Commit to a lean safety management system
2. Imagine the ideal workplace as someone who is implementing and using the system
3. Review the system and supersede redundant documentation before introducing new processes
4. Review the system based on categories
5. Follow the right order
6. Ask yourself, is this process or procedure making your workplace safer?
Rules 1-5 were not surprising or new to me, and on reflection they mirror the continuous improvement cycle. Rule 6 was something new, and a question I only started asking myself, my team and our people in the past three years.
How do we spark joy?
Three years ago, at Probuild, we asked our people who use and implement the management system on a daily basis, what health and safety processes and procedures they believed were not contributing to making our workplaces safer.
The responses were well thought out. Users of the systems articulated what was not sparking joy and suggested ways to simplify the process. When we analysed the responses, we organised the data into categories and a clear trend emerged. Company Standards and Legacy Documentation were overloading the system and may not have been contributing to reducing harm or improving workplace health and safety.
It would be remiss to purely act on these survey results alone and so informed decisions to reorganise and descale the management system were supported by viewing other data available to us.
What non-compliance is telling us.
Auditing is a necessary evil. To those being audited, it can feel like a negative process, an opportunity to highlight what isn’t being done, identifying what procedure isn’t being followed and what process hasn’t been implemented. I look at this from another angle. If trends from auditing identify that a particular process or procedure isn’t being followed or implemented, this is a catalyst to review the document to determine what value it is providing.
Incident and injury data are then reviewed to determine if any incidents or injuries have occurred as a result of not implementing or following this procedure.
If it can be demonstrated that there is a link between the audit result and incident and injury data one must question the purpose of the procedure and if it is adding value.
Coming back to auditing trends, where areas of high compliance are observed, it is important to ask the question, why is compliance being achieved? Is it because the process is easy to understand, unambiguous, and people can see the value and/or understand the consequence of not adhering to the procedure?
Accredited Management Systems.
Health and safety management system emerged in the late 1980s following the introduction of health and safety legislation. As the safety industry evolved and became more sophisticated, independent auditing bodies began certifying health and safety management systems. This was something that organisations aspired to achieved.
Certifying bodies write audit criterions with the best of intentions; providing a structured management system framework to employers, which then assist with providing a safe workplace.
Being accredited to a safety management system requires organisations to be regularly audited against a specific criteria. Independent certifying bodies generally provide audit criteria guidelines. The purpose of the guidelines is to assist companies with achieving the audit criteria. Some guidelines outline evidence that can be provided to the audit to demonstrate compliance. It is quite common for “documented processes” to be part of the evidence required to meet the criteria. In some cases, to check the box, organisations create procedures, these procedures then pile up on top of each other and may not actually provide purpose to the organisation. Further to this, organisations may create these procedures as it is perceived the easiest way to meet the audit criteria.
In a pursuit for accreditation and conformance to a system, sometimes we lull ourselves into a false sense of security, thinking that if we have a procedure for xyz, people will follow the procedure, or that it will prevent an incident, and that accreditation will be achieved. If only it were that easy. I could debate at length “procedure versus behaviours” approach to health and safety. Rest assured, there is limited research supporting a direct link between the number of procedures in a system and the safety performance of an organisation.
Tidying Up.
“Throwing out” safety procedures is something that may seem flippant and make people uncomfortable. In my experience empowering people to speak up about what is not sparking joy, they raised suggestions and ideas about how to streamline our systems. People have stopped complaining about too many procedures and introducing new processes without reason, and have shifted their mindset to simple systems that add value to employees and create safer workplaces.
It is humbling to hear that our health and safety management system is now enabling people to do their jobs more efficiently. For me, this sparks joy.