Health and Safety Management System: How to Set it Up

Thanks to the growing awareness and consciousness, there’s plenty of new focus on health and safety management systems. But before we discuss these systems, it is imperative to talk about what these systems are. An occupational health and safety management system work to ensure the safety and well-being of employees at the workplace. So, a system tasked with this particular job deals with establishing relevant policies and factors such as planning for preventive measures against accidents, line management, and execution of the organization’s health and safety policy, among other things. Suffice it to say that this is a complicated endeavor that is considerably eased with help from the aforementioned occupational health and safety management systems.

Of course, there are myriad different ways to approach this aspect of running a business. However, the advanced offerings in the market adopt the most practical approach: Strategize based on an in-depth understanding of the company’s risks. A sweeping, one size fits all approach isn’t the most sensible. Of course, these are not the only factors and considerations one needs to keep in mind when it comes to setting up a health and safety system for an organization. Listed below are some of the other vital measures one can undertake to set up such a system.

1. Management buy-in and employee participation: The two critical factors to ensuring this endeavor’s success are getting the management’s buy-in and ensuring employees’ involvement. This means the government should guide and enable the company to set up, administer, and ensure the health and management system’s upkeep. Now, to see to it that there is meaningful employee participation, it is imperative to provide the requisite resources, determine and allay any issues and blockages for involvement in the system.
2. Plan for a health and safety management system: A haphazard approach will never do anyone any good. Hence, it is vital to ensure that you plan for the system strategically. For this, one must first identify risks, system deficiencies, the scope for improvement, etc. The point is to define clear goals and then for the system to focus on working towards these goals and the overall objective to achieve better health and safety standards in the office.
3. Implementation: When implementing such a system, it is necessary not to lose focus on risk identification and assessment and control and prevention. To that end, you must set up a robust reporting system, undertake inspections, foretell emergencies, etc.
4. Track, assess, and rectify: The job doesn’t end once the system is implemented, i.e., one must continue to keep an eye on the network, analyze its efficacy and efficiency, and identify problem areas, if at all. In case you do end up finding any issues or the potential for improvement, the obvious next step is to implement the requisite changes. To do this successfully, it is advisable to establish processes for tracking and auditing the system, incident investigations, etc.
5. Regular management review: The final step one must undertake to ensure the continued effectiveness of their systems is not a one-time thing, i.e., it must be done periodically. But what? Management reviews of the occupational health and safety system, of course. First, the management review will help ensure it has been set up and executed correctly and see that it works as intended. These reviews will also go a long way in helping the organization identify what aspects of the program are working and whether it is primed to achieve its identified goals.

There is no denying that implementing an occupational safety and health management system is not an easy task. However, the above guide should help make the process easier and serve to glean better levels of efficacy from the system and thus improve safety at the workplace.