Safety Management System: A Beginners Guide

1. Safety Management System A beginners guide

2. What is a Safety Management System? • A system that is designed solely for the purpose that is, to manage safety risk at the workplace. • It should reduce the risk to a level that is as low as is reasonably practical or ALARP, thereby preventing harm to people. • The system should be able to identify, assess and control hazards to all people involved, employees and the public. • There is a substantial body of evidence that an efficient safety management system can reduce any financial exposure or damage to the reputation of the company by bringing down the number of accidents.

3. Industrial Safety Standards • ANZI Z-10 • ISO 45001 • OSHA Safety Management Guidelines • Behaviour Based Safety • Fundamentals of Scientific Management • New View of Safety Management

4. ANSI Z-10 • The American National Standards Institute (ANSI) oversees standards and conformity assessment activities in the US. • ANSI Z10 is an Occupational Health and Safety Management Systems Standard, that offers a comprehensive strategy for common benefits in the occupational safety and health area for achieving better productivity, service, quality, profit, and other organizational goals. • ANSI Z-10 covers minimum requirements for an occupational safety and health management system, it has also included risk assessment components recently.

5. Key Topics Covered in ANSI Z-10 • Management Leadership • Management Review • Roles and Responsibilities • Policy Statements • Employee Participation • Assessment and Prioritization • Planning • Implementation and Operation • Evaluation and Corrective Action • Audit Information

6. ISO 45001-Occupational Health & Safety • ISO or the International Standard Organization is an independent non-governmental organization that brings together experts from across the world to share knowledge and develop voluntary, consensus based, market relevant international standards. • International Labour Organization (ILO) estimates that more than 2.3 million people die at work from an occupational injury or disease. ISO 45001 sets minimum standard of practice to ensure the safety of employees at workplace. • With the sudden emergence of the corona virus pandemic, ISO has published a new standard for workplace safety management. ISO/PAS 45005 Occupational Health and Safety Management, General guidelines for safe working during the COVID-19 Pandemic.

7. OSHA Safety Management Guidelines • The Occupational Safety and Health Administration that comes under the Unites Stated Department of Labour recommends practices for safety and health programs. • These non-mandatory safety and health program is more like a step wise approach. • And the approach is based around seven core elements

8. 7 Core Elements in OSHA Guidelines • Management Leadership • Worker Participation • Hazard Identification and Assessment • Hazard Prevention and Control • Education and Training • Program Evaluation and Improvement • Communication and Coordination for Host Employers, Contractors and Staffing Agencies.

9. Behavioural Based Safety • Behavioural based safety leverages on the safety observations to inform management of overall safety of the workplace. • In the process of BBS, trained observers conduct reviews on other employees based on their behaviour in the workplace. • The observer takes note of safe and unsafe behaviour as well as working conditions, these parameters might not be the same for all companies. • These notes are then passed on to management as feedbacks and then management can evaluate these behaviours and take necessary steps to make sure that people do not behave unsafe in the workplace for the sake of their own safety.

10. Scientific Management • Scientific management is the theory by which you can analyse and synthesize workflows to improve economic efficiency and labour productivity. • It was Frederick Taylor that proposed this management style. • The principal object of scientific management is to secure the maximum prosperity for the employer.

11. New View of Safety Management • In the new view of safety management or Safety-II that came about in late 1990’s focuses on increasing the effectiveness of the safety effort and to reduce injuries thereby avoiding fatalistic accidents.

12. Conclusion • Safety of the employees and people involved is and always will be the first priority of organizations. • We discussed here various industrial safety standards, along with these adopting the services of an automated safety management system at the company that will ensure proper governance of the safety management procedures at the organization. • These certifications and practices that ensures safety also drives reliability of the brand name of an organization, which will be a great factor to drive businesses at organizations.