Inspired Health and Safety Objectives
You may be thinking of setting your Health and Safety management system objectives for the coming year. If you are short on inspiration, you don’t have to look far, here are a few ideas straight from OH&S ISO45001:2018.
- Look at your risk assessments – what hazards still have a high-risk score? Can you reduce these in any way?
- Still looking at your risk assessments – have you really used the hierarchy of control in deciding robust control measures or are there hazards that rely a bit too much on ‘good old’ supervision and PPE?
- Your policy (the little used document in your reception area) – take a look at this. If you have made commitments in the policy then you really should be setting objectives to achieve this.
- Accidents and incidents from last year – have you closed our on all corrective actions are there still some outstanding issues?
- Near misses – again have you closed out on all corrective actions are there still some outstanding issues?
- Management Review – you probably made some commitments in the meeting – it’s always worth taking a close look at this and make sure any actions are tied into your objectives for the year.
- Compliance Evaluation… Did you find any areas that needed improvement from your review?
- Health & Safety committee meeting minutes – Review the minutes to make sure you have picked up any longer-term actions identified through worker participation into your objectives.
- ISO45000 family – The guidance documents, including other standards such as ISO45003 are packed with help and advice on how to apply and improve health and safety management in your organisation.
- HSE web site – Very user friendly and full of free information – Use this to look for any upcoming changes in legislation so that you and your organisation are prepared or look for guidance and examples of how to achieve best practice.
And finally for every objective, don’t forget they should be measurable, have a clear responsibility assigned with a time scale for completion.
