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A Safety Management Perspective, Part 3 of 3
Last week, I presented a pair of case studies demonstrating how strategic planning can improve safety progress while simply reacting to changes can impede it. Let's put this series to bed with a look at the process of strategic planning and its application to the health and safety program.
The Role of Safety in Strategic Planning
When business professionals talk about strategic planning, they usually discuss the performance of big ticket operations like marketing, product development and budgets. Health and safety performance generally doesn't make the discussion. The perception is that health and safety is secondary to core business. Generally, it's only when accidents happen that health and safety gets the attention of senior company officials. And this attention is more in the form of reflex reactions than long-term forwarding thinking planning.
Safety professionals need to overcome this state of affairs. Their objective should be to integrate health and safety into business planning. As with other operations, health and safety requires a long term plan of approximately one- to three-years. It requires the establishment of specific objectives and timetables for achieving them. And it requires comprehensiveness and improvement in all aspects of performance.
The Role of Safety Professionals in Strategic Planning
Whether you're a staff safety professional or a contract consultant, the methodology for attempting to identify strategic safety improvement is the same. You must ask yourself a series of questions:
- What is your role in the safety improvement process?
- Are you simply going to be asked for an opinion or are you expected to help identify the issues?
- Are you going to be involved in any training or professional development (on the receiving end) or are you being asked to facilitate the improvement process?
Conclusion
In the words of Winston Churchill, luck is the residue of design. Churchill would have made an excellent safety director. After all, achieving better health and safety performance is one part luck and nine parts hard work and planning.
BY THE NUMBERS
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California Earthquakes
It was last Tuesday and the conference call was dragging into its second hour. Absently, I went to my web browser and saw an item on my CNN.com homepage that made my hair stand up: "Earthquake Rocks Los Angeles." Luckily, it turned out to be a small one. But, that 5.4 magnitude quake of last week is a prelude to the "Big One" that we all know is coming. Here's a numerical look at the earthquake situation in California:
- 152 The number of years since California experienced an earthquake as powerful as 7.9 on the Richter Scale (Jan. 9, 1857)
- 99 The percentage likelihood that California will have a 6.7 or larger earthquake in the next 30 years
- 46 The percentage likelihood that California will have a 7.5 or larger earthquake in the next 30 years
- 3,000 to 5,000 The number of people expected to be killed if an earthquake similar in magnitude to the 1857 quake struck Los Angeles during rush hour
- 12,000 to 50,000 The number of people such a quake during rush hour L.A. would likely land in a hospital
- 7.2 The biggest earthquake to hit California in the past 5 years-a 2005 quake centered off the Northern California coast
Source: U.S. Geological Survey
TOP 10
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| Landers, CA: Site of 7.3 earthquake in 1992 |
Most Powerful California Earthquakes in 30 Years
- 7.3; Landers; June 26, 1992; 3 deaths
- 7.2; Cape Mendocino; April 25, 1992
- 7.2; Off Northern California Coast; June 14, 2005
- 7.1; Hector Mine; Oct. 16, 1999
- 7.0; Honeydew; Aug. 17, 1991
- 7.0; Cape Mendocino; Sept. 1, 1994
- 6.9; Loma Prieta; Oct. 18, 1989; 63 deaths
- 6.7; Northridge; Jan. 17, 1994; 60 deaths
- 6.6; San Simeon; Dec. 22, 2003; 2 deaths
- 6.6; Off Northern California Coast; June 16, 2005
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