A recent blog in Linked In’s HSE specialist group asked the question “Is safety more important than production, or the other way round ?”
Different opinions were offered but I came down on the side of safety first !
Like every other part of managing a business, safety management is very important ,but it beats the others as, if you get it wrong, it can cost human lives or livelihoods.
When you pick a business to be in, you do so on the basis of a risk analysis, related to the money you must invest and the returns you expect to derive. If the risk of failure or loss of your investment is too great, you go look for somewhere else to invest your money.
When it comes to safety, the same rationale and principles apply, and you have to analyse, task by task, the level of risk in your business.
If the safety risk of doing something in the business is too high, and you may injure or lose staff by doing it,common sense tells you not to do it.
So,if you can’t manage the level of risk involved down to an acceptable level, get out of the business and do something safer.
Risks need to be analysed by comparing the LIKELIHOOD of an event happening with the possible CONSEQUENCES of it happening. Low Likelihood with minor consequences may be acceptable, but high likelihood with serious consequences certainly will not.
A simple 5 x 5 matrix is a good way to start, against which you review tasks and allocate them a rating on both the likelihood and consequences axes, and plot the results ,and this will give you a visible risk profile. The objective then becomes to eliminate ALL high risk activities and manage all medium risks down to a low and acceptable level. You then have to decide how to manage the low-level risk and set the standard for everyone to meet. You can download a sample Risk Assessment Matrix here.
You can decide what levels you set the scales on both axes, and thereby set the level of risk you are prepared to accept in your business.
The best people to involve with such risk analyses are those who do the work and are exposed to the risk, with guidance from someone familiar with the process, and one or two outsiders to challenge the decisions made.
