By Mary Clarke, CEO, Cognisco
As we all know, the consequences of corporate health and safety failings have become more serious thanks to new Health and Safety Guidelines that came into effect in February this year.
Under this legislation, companies can face fines of up £20 million, or even more for larger organisations and this is sending a clear message to businesses that health and safety must be prioritised, with more of a focus on people.
Clearly this is a positive step towards improving standards and one that is long overdue.
Companies will have no choice but to shine a light over their organisation, and will need to recognise that processes and systems are only as good as the people using them.
However, relying on processes, systems, training and procedures alone will not keep an organisation and its people safe, compliant or in a position to manage risk effectively.
Unless organisations can evidence that their people follow processes correctly, understand how to apply their training and are prepared to consistently re-assess the competence and capability and progress of their staff, they will be exposed to people risks.
Most companies aren’t currently able to do this. For this reason, managing ‘People risk’ is arguably the hardest area for many businesses to identify, address and manage currently, as they simply don’t know where they might be exposed.
Breaking down the challenge
Organisations relying heavily on employees working in potentially hazardous environments face numerous challenges in terms of building capable, qualified and competent teams and individuals.
Employees may be based in different locations, working remotely or there may be teams of contractors from other organisations or joint venture partnerships added into the mix. Managing such a disparate workforce and gathering accurate information about who’s currently qualified today, competent today and capable today is difficult.
Whilst these organisations work extremely hard to put processes in place – recording employee competence and qualifications in their systems and delivering the required training, it’s not uncommon for shortcuts to be made to speed up the sign-off process for competence, qualifications and observations and in some instances, it becomes a tick box exercise.
Most of the time organisations are able to work effectively without issues by working in this way. However, it only takes one of these areas to be exposed for mistakes to creep in. This could be a process work-around that results in something going wrong, or someone misunderstanding their training and applying their knowledge in the wrong way which could lead to an injury at work and escalate into a major issue. Not only will such an incident affect the individual, it could damage the project, generate huge financial and reputational damage for the company and impact shareholder value.
What’s more is, the more often this approach is taken, the harder it is for the root cause to be identified and mitigated.
Too often, organisations recovering from problems get caught in a continuous circle of promoting new processes, refining and improving systems and deploying more training.
Yet these approaches fail to identify how people are likely to behave at work or if they have understood the processes and training they have received. Having insight into all these different factors is essential for a safer, more effective and efficient organisation.
What can be done today?
It’s more effective for organisations to train individuals based on their specific development requirements rather than ‘sheep dipping’ everyone with the same training. Targeted training reduces cost and time and the training is more likely to be supported, understood and applied.
To make training and processes stick (which is more than just simply passing a test or acknowledging a process), a continuous approach to re-assessing and observing people is needed, together with the appropriate development interventions.
We recommend that training is delivered in bite sized chunks to reduce the time spent away from the job and that companies have an up to date and accurate record of people’s capabilities, qualifications and competence in one place– rather than records of their past competence or qualifications.
If training is better targeted and efficiently managed then gaining buy-in and support for the training from staff is easier too. Processes are also much easier to map and implement and the executive has a holistic view of the workforce, meaning they can be assured that the safety and health policies they put in place will be implemented effectively and distilled throughout the organisation.
For the past 20 years, Cognisco has been helping organisations who rely heavily on their people gain real-time insights and analytics into their employees’ understanding, likely behaviour, capability, confidence and confidence.
In the food industry, we partnered with leading food assurance company NSF-CMi on a project to improve food hygiene and safety standards in over 2500 food outlets during the London 2012 Olympics.
We developed an intelligent behavioural assessment framework called NSF Insight to measure the competence and confidence of food handlers and provide managers with real time analytics about their staff competence and any potential people risks to address to safeguard their businesses.
In Rail, we work with Network Rail amongst others to minimise risks on the UK’s railways. Our work ensures that only competent people undertake safety critical work and that the companies are fully compliant with the Safety Standards Board’s requirements and regulations.
In Utilities, we have helped Thames Water to reduce the risk of cable strikes for engineers working on its major waterways upgrade and in the Care sector, we are helping Care home providers verify the competence and confidence of staff looking after patients with Dementia.
Assessing each individual’s current level of understanding and knowledge of the relevant processes and procedures and understanding, how confident they are in consistently applying them in any scenario, will give companies data analytics and insight to target specific training aligned to individual need.
With people-centred data and a global view of the understanding, capability and confidence of teams and individuals, companies have the right tools to mitigate risks before problems or accidents occur.
In light of these new health and safety guidelines, this is something all organisations need to take on board to reduce their exposure to record fines and reputational damage that can take years to change.
Mary Clarke is CEO of Cognisco
