Continually improve health and safety
The industry continues to work toward its vision of zero fatalities. This requires continuous improvement and a number of step changes by individual companies and the industry as a whole.
A useful process for an organisation to continually improve its health and safety systems and performance is to use the Plan-Do-Check-Act approach. This approach helps an organisation to achieve a balance between the systems and behavioural aspects of management. It also treats health and safety management as an integral part of good management generally, rather than as a standalone system.
- Plan: Determine your policy and plan for implementation.
- Do: Profile risks, organise for health and safety, implement your plan.
- Check: Measure performance (monitor before events, investigate after events).
- Act: Review performance and act on lessons learned.
More broadly, continuous improvement will come from meaningful action from industry such as through:
- Continued engagement and visible leadership from all within the company – from the CEO to supervisors – to reinforce the message that health and safety is a core value.
- Capacity building to help workers understand the importance of health, safety and wellbeing.
- Continued empowerment of workers to insist on working in a healthy and safe environment.
- Engaging local communities and ensuring continued dialogue on issues affecting them.
- Building on the trend of seeing health, safety and wellbeing as one interconnected, holistic system.
- Continued adoption of technological solutions.
- Learning from other industries about the challenges and successes on their journey to zero harm.
- Improving the controls put in place to manage risks.
- Seeking ways to ensure workers’ exposure to hazardous materials is managed effectively.
Working with host communities, civil society, institutions and governments in safeguarding wellbeing for workers and host communities.