The most important OHS Due Diligence tool
How does dealing with many industry sectors affect strategic planning?
PROJECT MANAGEMENT: a grassroots issue of organisational support
Using Thinking and Learning Styles: Making Facilitation really work
Bruce Whitehead is one of the Directors of The Brief Group. He kindly contributes this article to assist our readers avoid costly Mistakes through failure to comply with legislated requirements that can often be hard to interpret. An ex-work cover prosecution lawyer, you can be sure Bruce and his colleagues know their stuff!
The most important OHS Due Diligence tool
By Bruce Whitehead, Director, The Brief Group
http://www.thebriefgroup.com.au
If you were to pick one aspect of, or thing in your safety management system as the most important, what would it be? It would have to be important from an injury prevention and a compliance perspective wouldn't it?
I think I know what it is, and my answer would not change irrespective of your business type. Interestingly, not one OHS Act or Regulation in Australia mandates that you have one.
The answer is a Risk Management Register, otherwise known as a corrective action register, risk register or hazard register. Let me tell you why it is the most important OHS Due Diligence tool in your business:
Managing workplace safety is all about identifying hazards, assessing risk, eliminating or controlling that risk, and making sure any controls implemented are effective. The Register documents all of these processes.
Hazards should be addressed by reference to gravity of risk. The Register prioritises your hazards from most serious, to least serious.
If an employee is injured as a consequence of a known hazard, as opposed to a merely foreseeable one, your chances of being prosecuted are much higher. The Register assigns accountability and timeframes to provide senior management some comfort that a program of corrective action is in place.
Controls devised must be capable of being referenced back to the Hierarchy of Controls coupled with an assessment made at the time of arriving at the decision, that the risk has been mitigated As Low As Reasonably Practicable (ALARP). The Register makes provision for these two expectations to be signed off.
Senior management has a duty to monitor the efficacy of the company’s hazard identification processes. The Register should make provision detailing which system process resulted in each hazard being identified, thereby allowing more informed assessments to be made on process performance. Being “proactive” for senior managers involves maintaining an active interest in key system processes.
Senior management has a duty to monitor the efficacy of the company’s corrective action processes. The Register enables simple positive performance indicators to be developed, such as a preferred close-out rate based on number of hazards identified versus number of hazards closed out within agreed timeframes. A Register is also very easy to audit.
Good businesses demonstrate an active interest in their key system processes and recognised good compliance. The Register identifies which person was responsible for identifying the hazard.
To ensure consistency, employees assessing risk should apply one standard risk matrix. The Register stipulates the company endorsed matrix.
Once controls have been implemented, there must be a period of review to verify the efficacy of those controls in mitigating the risk. The Register entry cannot be signed off until the system prescribed period of review has passed.
Companies should aim for consistently high standards of risk control between sites and departments and minimise unnecessary reinvention. A Register can be centrally maintained, whilst signed off entries should be filed by hazard type for future reference.
Senior management should be deploying OHS resources to those parts of the business subject to the greatest amount of risk. The Register can quickly orientate decision makers to high-risk areas so more strategic, informed investments can be made. Outstanding Register issues can be quickly escalated by the Document Owner to persons of authority for resolution.
Safety meeting agendas typically lack substance and punch. The Register can be tabled at these meetings creating greater workplace visibility and accountability.
If I was a director or person concerned in the management of any of my clients’ businesses, this Register is the one document, above all others that I would want to see.
In the last edition of the Creating Change eXchange newsletter we explained that we are a team of specialists, with a broad skill-base. This generated some interesting questions!
One of these was:
"How does dealing with many industry sectors
affect strategic planning?"
by Karen Dempster
What a good question! We were surprised by the concept that our diversity is a burden as well as a benefit, as the impact on strategic planning has been merely accepted within the group as a fact of life.
Although I and others in our group have very specific areas of capability, the strategic planning and need to undertake PESTLE-style analysis is certainly regularly challenged by providing diverse services and understanding many differing client goals. Naturally also, our own goals require alignment and complimentary planning if we are to be able to service internal and external needs well.
So, a desire and ability to focus attention on global market and various industry sectors is not only challenging, but in fact an underrated skill. I began to think of it as even more a point of difference than I had noticed previously. (In fact, sometimes I think of it more as a barrier to our marketing! Our diversity certainly seems to irritate many business coaches who spend time telling me how much I have got "wrong".) Sigh. I will always continue to be recalcitrant I suspect.
Anyway, my point is, when one is focussing tightly on strategies about what "I" do; what "I" am interested in, it is easy to overlook or not recognise other forces about to affect your business. Having colleagues and experts who are automatically looking at and linked into other dimensions of world or local trends can be an aspect of risk management that is unachievable for, or overlooked by, the SME business sector or highly specialist organisations.
Comprehending the varied perspectives and forcing ourselves as consultants to “get into the other industry’s shoes” can be hard at times, and is certainly sure to stretch some of our capabilities. But even when the knowledge is not pertinent to our current activities, there is a learning enrichment and brain enhancement for those in our discussions to “lift their eyes” to see activities and trends they may otherwise miss.
Our capture solution has always been intense cross-industry and cross-topic discussions and "ideation" sessions. Importantly, these are recorded in a range of ways, such as written notes, compiled electronic files and more recently, digitised recordings.
There is nothing terribly sophisticated about the concept of keeping track of ideas and thoughts, but I suspect the regular process of so doing is unusual for some businesses, and great ideas slip away for lack of time to formulate them or refine the raw concept. Having ideation-driven strategic-planning efforts, rather than strategic planning driven by already semi-planned strategies is where I am training my own sights.
So, the effective categorisation of these "captured" insights is vital. For many years I admittedly failed miserably in this regard, watching some of the best insights arise as businesses years later, or the worst potential difficulties happen and cause problems even though they had been foreseen - and forgotten. But we are getting there and in the main I would say our capacity to take in many factors when undertaking strategic planning has been enhanced greatly in the past ten years.
We would love to have your comments on this topic – please respond by email and thus join the Creating Change eXchange discussion forum.
Karen
____________________________________________________________________
PROJECT MANAGEMENT:
a grassroots issue of organisational support
by Zoe Long
Working to produce an agreed project deliverable within a defined budget and schedule should be fairly straight forward; especially when you have the magical project plan at your fingertips … enter reality! In many organisations I have witnessed project managers who are juggling multiple projects in a business environment that is either in the early stages of setting up a Project Management System or have grown so fast as a business that the Project Management System has not been developed to the level of maturity that is required. This leaves project managers exhausted and businesses exposed as a result of their project management practices. Fundamentally speaking a Project Management System is all about applying quality management principles.
Some of the current issues that I see in project management today are related to:
- Exposure in contract design and management
- A lack of understanding as to how you build quality into the project
- Limited business support in regards to the provision of project management tools, processes
and systems; including those that integrate with the rest of the business environment.
Development of a Project Management System means that everyone is using one central system; which allows for clear communication and reduction of duplicated effort. Imagine how much time and money the business can save when each project manager does not have to create and maintain their own system!
Building quality into each aspect of the project can also save valuable time, money and resource usage especially when you are able to avoid the issue of rework. There are also many positive benefits associated with the prestige of ‘getting it right first time’ including enhanced customer confidence.
Much of the project dollars are spent on contractors and procured materials. The professional integrity of your contract documentation is a key issue. If your business does not have legal capability or contract specialists who can provide timely support and advice then you need to find a workable solution. A poorly written contract can add significant costs to a project in ‘project variations’ (add-ons). This situation can create tension and be quite damaging from a relationship perspective.
Your project managers will have a greater opportunity for success where the foundation of a carefully thought out Project Management System has been implemented. Project management is a team effort and your project managers are the key players who need a well structured and supported playing field in which they can successfully operate!
____________________________________________________________________
Using Thinking and Learning Styles:
Making Facilitation really work
by Karen Dempster
This article is designed to assist Course Facilitators to more fully utilise the knowledge and skills they have from working with well-validated psychometric instruments. It is possible to apply this to one’s understanding of participants’ learning styles, aiding the depth of communication at an intuitive level.
Many Learning & Development professionals have gained accreditation during their careers in a psychometric (or thinking styles/personality assessment) instrument, such as Team Management Systems, MBTI (Myers-Briggs Type Instrument) or others serving a variety of workplace, individual and group, situations. Not all facilitators have the opportunity to use these instruments extensively however, for example through a research environment, nor even within their chosen field, on a daily or weekly basis. Likewise, Facilitators are familiar with adult learning styles and learning needs – although some may have only been able to gain access to the “tip of the iceberg” information in this complex topic.
Professional Trainers/Facilitators are called upon to provide services related to many subjects and content types, training leaders, teams and individual participants within the context of either nationally accredited or non-accredited courses. Regularly they deliver content not of their own design, and targeted to achieve specific outcomes to achieve a specific group (not necessarily the participant’s!) aim. Facilitators adapt very well to these diverse circumstances in the most instances and deliver quality training results working within a framework requiring high levels of responsiveness, emotional intelligence and flexibility.
It is possible to apply knowledge of a thinking styles instrument comprehensively, not only to enhance rapport and retain connection with learners, but to impart information in a way that links to our learning preferences, and in fact conflict modes and other mental processing preferences. “Learning Styles” is certainly not merely the vocal, visual & kinaesthetic aspects routinely addressed in training design, but expands to include left/right brain functionality, gender variations (physiologically driven and socially influenced) and inherent perception and information processing styles – much of this still undergoing intensive research. To achieve proficiency in this area, self-analysis and discovery must take place within the Facilitator, and self-driven research past the normal level of debrief provided by accreditation providers must be undertaken by each individual.
Facilitators’ research needs to focus firstly on their own personality and thinking and should be part of their professional development plan. This could address items such as:
- Personality styles and reaction under stress
- Learning styles and analysis instruments – extensive information is available in this area
- Brain Dominance affects
- Conflict Styles and the impacts/trends of each of these on different personalities
- Research into communication and language patterns/cultural issues/thinking styles
- Emotional Intelligence and language use
- Commonly encountered pathological conditions
It was a major insight for me when a Psychologist indicated that statistically speaking, if a group of 15-20 people are together in a room, one of them will be suffering from either temporary or long-term illness, low or critical level stress factors, or even a pathologically diagnosed psychological illness – under various levels of control. On the positive side, most people in your session will be feeling fine – but even these “well” people may be complex in their perceptual intake and processing styles.
On that note: Who would say Facilitation is easy? How often do well-designed materials and experienced Facilitators find they are still challenged by participants and can’t quite get a grip on why one person was so complex to work with?
Facilitators and Training professionals are bombarded with course content and train the trainer initiatives to teach them how to deliver this content. Our recommendation is that some time is allocated either by the Facilitator or through an employer driven initiative - to ensure the Facilitator’s own very comprehensive understanding of themselves is achieved. Then gradually build on these insights through observation and research, making connections with situations where they observed participants exhibiting (now identifiable) behaviours, thus then enhancing the assistance they can offer to their participants one-on-one or in group sessions.
