A safety management system is a formal way to systematically ensure health and safety throughout the organization. It should be fully comprehensive and should integrate all related teams and systems together to have the greatest effectiveness throughout the organization. The safety management system should:
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- Have clear support from top management throughout the organization.
- Be incorporated into the company’s written policies and into any existing systems.
- Designate who is responsible for each safety role and what that responsibility entails.
- Have a process for safety assessment (such as hazard identification and risk assessment). This may include safety audits, for example, as a continual means of updating the system.
- Note what control measures are in place and how these are managed. Control measures should be established if they don’t already exist. These control measures are designed to reduce any risks or hazards.
- Include emergency response planning.
- Have a clear process for reporting, investigating, addressing, and mitigating all safety concerns.
- Have a place where safety information can be maintained and accessed by employees.
- Assess employee safety knowledge and have a plan to ensure all employees have adequate safety training.
- Provide tools and metrics to help make safety-related decisions.
- Have a method to review or audit the safety management system itself to ensure nothing is missing—and to ensure it gets updated as needed. The audit also needs to confirm that the safety measures and controls are working and there are no systemic problems or policies that contradict it. There should be a means for continual improvement.
The safety management system starts with a plan, but the system itself refers to the entire process from planning to documentation to implementation. It is a difficult and time-consuming task to complete and requires continual follow-up. It is a lot of hard work, but it’s worthwhile because safety should be a top priority in any organization.
Employers have an obligation to provide a workplace free of safety hazards, but they also have benefits to doing so. Improving employee safety not only reduces employee injuries and deaths, but it also has benefits for employee morale and for the organization’s bottom line. A reduction in injuries and illnesses saves money for the organization in terms of a reduction in days off due to injury and improved performance due to improved employee morale.
How Do Safety Management Systems Impact HR?
All of this directly affects HR professionals in several ways:
- Safety management often falls under the purview of HR. Minimally, HR is often tasked with putting together a safety team, even if the ultimate responsibility for safety gets shifted to someone within that team.
- Additionally, HR is often responsible for training, and safety is an important component of any training program.
- HR managers are the first line of defense because they know all about the organization, including the working environment for employees.
- HR team members can be instrumental in getting safety measures integrated throughout the organization, even if it’s simply by bringing awareness across various departments of how safety plans can be integrated into various systems.
- HR team members can also ensure there are no barriers to reporting safety concerns.
- Safety can even be incorporated into performance management.
- Alternately, it can become a disciplinary issue if an employee is unable to meet safety requirements for job performance.
Does your organization have a formal safety management system? What has been your experience?
*This article does not constitute legal advice. Always consult legal counsel with specific questions.