Safety Management Systems

Another great OHS read from the Legendary Safety Guru George Robotham who passed away suddenly in Sept 2013. Download it here

Conclusion from George’s ebook:

The above is quite a simple approach to OHS but detailed implementation of the above will achieve significant improvements. Listen to your people, make significant efforts to seek out their ideas on OHS, reduce the bull-dust that surrounds the safety effort, keep the lines of communication open, act upon good ideas, maintain a good sense of humour, show the troops you are fair-dinkum about safety, use the powerful influence front-line supervisors have on their employees and do not take yourself too seriously! Do not make the mistake of talking to workers about the company safety goals and mission, instead talk about the effects of safety in their immediate work environment. Do not think your safety efforts end when you have written a safe working procedure, procedural controls in isolation are notoriously ineffective.

Focus on “What is in it for me”

As a manager and a supervisor you need a personal action plan on how to manage safety and you need to regularly review progress on the action plan with a process and content expert.

Use Class 1 personal damage occurrences to guide your actions.

You cannot underestimate the power of excellent leadership in OHS.

The appendix of the book contains George’s classic 30 Ways To Stuff Up a Safety Management System