What Not Safety Series: A light hearted look at safety management systems

Part 2: What not to do with Planning

Gidday mate, Murray Hurry again, your Corporate Safety Officer. Guess what time of the year it is mate? You guessed it, it’s planning and review time, and, just quietly, you got bogged down a bit last year. I’m getting in ahead of the play so we can tie it all up with no fuss or worries this time.

Now, go to Section 23 of the Manual – the one we team-lifted onto your shelf last month – whip out forms 23a to 29c. The ones about visions, mission statements, KPIs, self assessments, objectives and the Annual Safety Plan mate.

You’ll notice that the forms are already filled out this time. Never let it be said that your old mate doesn’t look after you every step of the way, particularly after last year’s debacle, ay?

Where you went wrong last year, mate, was you didn’t listen to your old cobber Murray and you went off and showed it to that chinless wonder of a GM of yours. Before we knew it, he’d organised a Steering Committee and something called a 360 degree review. Jeez, mate, he took it far too seriously and you don’t need me to remind you how much work it caused for the lot of us. So this year, I want you to take it quietly and not be so ambitious.
Don’t worry about all the fancy vision and mission forms, we got that sorted. Heinz the auditor loves them and as long as we change a few words each time and talk his ears off, he’s sweet with it all. Rubber stamp, mate, that’s what works best, rubber stamp. The one we need to get right is the Annual Plans and Objectives. Get too excited with this one and you’ll be working weekends, but if we do too little, Heinz gets sulky, so we got to strike a balance, mate.

Anyway, the best news is that I managed to get some good oil off Heinz at the Christmas Party mate. He won’t remember because I got him off his face, don’t you worry about that. Had to stand guard outside the loo for an hour to stop His Lordship finding out the state Heinz was in, but it was worth it because Heinz was very grateful and he started blubbing. Said I’m the best mate he ever had. Then he let me copy his Auditor Guidelines book. Bingo! Writing those objectives will be a breeze mate. So here’s what I want you to write:

Health and Safety Objectives 2011:

  1. Continue to strive to maintain appropriate and equivalent conformance with any relevant OHS legislation, codes and standards, by means of scheduled reviews, meetings and inclusive consultation.
  2. Aim for an increasingly appropriate accident experience across all functions within the business by consolidating and escalating our risk reduction efforts towards zero.
  3. Ensure all our employees, managers and stakeholders operate within the key parameters, values and aims indicated in our safety planning process by a constant and continuous process of vigilance, cross functional participation and collaboration.
  4. Repair the front gate.
No, seriously. Just listen to old Murray on this one. Heinz may look clever but those first three will fair do his head in. Just say you completed them, put a month on it and drone on about it till you see his eyes getting heavy and that funny twitch he gets in his cheek. That’s the time to take him outside for a smoke and show him the front gate. Tell him there was a piece of wire sticking out that grazed someone’s leg. Say it almost spoiled your zero injury record (I’ll be covering how we achieve zero lost days after the planning year starts, mate). Then say you fixed the offending wire in the gate. He’ll love it and he’ll forget the other three and tick the box. Don’t forget to take him to dinner somewhere nice.

Not too much grog, though mate. You don’t want to see him crying and you don’t want his life story.
Hooray mate. Talk later.

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