Nikki recently spoke at Safety & Health Expo. Her talk covered planning – and also the benefits of good planning; roll-out; challenges encountered; lessons learned; and ROI.
Planning
Nikki began by emphasising the first element of her strategy – planning, stating: “A goal without a plan is just a wish” – a resounding reason not to underestimate the importance of undertaking a thorough planning process. Another important element was ensuring buy-in from directors – as this can deliver practical as well as financial benefits, during planning and roll-out.
A major benefit gained by the thorough planning process, was the seamless implementation and successful embedding of the incident investigation system within the organisation.
Roll-out
To implement the system, Nikki designed a one day, in-house investigation course, for all health and safety staff; department supervisors; managers; and directors.
Part of the roll-out plan included the creation of incident review groups, that reported each month. Initially these were ‘filled with fear’ due to being new and unknown: but gradually, people realised that their findings and solutions could influence change, and also influence the availability of budgets –all in a positive way.
After the incident review groups reported a widespread increase in instances of violent behaviour in a particular section of the business, the decision was made to introduce body cams for everyone: this measure successfully reduced the incidents to zero.
Lessons learned
As with any organisation implementing a new methodology, challenges were overcome and lessons were learned along the way. The teams discovered that the problem-solving methodology used was also applicable – and therefore useful – to other departments e.g. commercial operations, and this broadened the scope of the project to deliver more benefits to the wider organisation.
Nikki classified the learning outcomes into three phases:
Phase 1:
Phase 2:
Phase 3:
Return on investment
Discussing the investment outcomes, Nikki shared her belief that this process ‘can invigorate your incident investigation’ which is certainly a resounding endorsement of the positive return – on both the finances and resources invested.
A project that began as a step-change in health and safety developed into something far larger and more valuable: as a result of complete buy-in by the wider teams, it was opened up company-wide – with the invaluable result that an increased number of employees became involved in incident investigation. The ensuing results of wider employee involvement can only have a positive outcome for the financial ROI, and the all-important bottom line.
A look at the key factors in applying a professional investigation methodology. Your chance to listen back, on demend, to our interview with David Ramsay, Group Managing Director, Kelvin TOP-SET.
