Developing an Action Plan

The Virtuous Circle: A Diagram on Forming a Functional Safety Policy "Considering the human, legal and economic implications of occupational road

risk it is clear that Managing Occupational Road Risk may be the greatest health

and safety issue that you face. Training awards schemes, management reviews, and risk assessments complement one another to build a circle of continuous improvement which is key to tackling work-related road safety."

Charles Davies. Head of RoSPA Driver and Fleet Solutions.

 

General Guidelines:

Organisations can rarely if ever solve their health and safety problems by simply introducing ‘one off’ measures following accidents. This reactive approach fails to investigate why accidents were not prevented in the first place and does not address underlying weaknesses which, if not remedied, will sooner or later give rise to further accidents.

Adopting a proactive approach to controlling ORR will only be possible if organisations have robust health and safety management systems in place based on acknowledged good practice as contained, for example, in HSE’s guidance, ‘Successful Health and Safety Management’ (HSG65). Put simply, the approach advocated in HSG65 says that organisations need to have:

  1. a clear policy statement which is communicated to all employees and contractors, setting their safety direction and general objectives, backed by senior management commitment at the highest level
  2. good safety organisation with clear responsibilities and relationships which promote a positive safety culture and the implementation of safety policies by: securing control; encouraging co-operation and effective communication; and ensuring competence of staff at all levels
  3. a planned approach to safety with performance standards for eliminating or controlling risk based on risk assessment and with clearly prioritised and time based targets for implementation
  4. adequate means to measure their safety performance - both actively by monitoring compliance with standards and reactively by investigating the causes of accidents and incidents
  5. appropriate procedures for reviewing performance against targets, auditing health and safety management processes and feeding back information and experience to further develop policies and improve performance.