Planning a Health and Safety Management System

As you might have guessed, an effective health and safety management system doesn’t happen
without a good deal of thought and planning.

By establishing specific goals and objectives, management sets expectations for

managers, supervisors, and workers, and for the program overall. The goals and
objectives should focus on specific actions that will improve workplace safety and
health.

 Gather and review relevant information to identify safety and health management system issues
 Prioritize the safety and health management system issues identified during the review mentioned
above
 Develop objectives for the safety and health management system and for risk control based on the
prioritized safety and health management system issues
 Create implementation plan to accomplish the prioritized objectives above

Implementing and Operating a Health and Safety Management System

Once you’ve planned your health and safety system, the obvious next steps are to implement it
and then put it into operation.

 Implement a reporting system

 Train workers how to identify and control hazards
 Conduct inspections
 Collect hazard control ideas
 Implement hazard control ideas
 Address/anticipate workplace emergencies
 Seek input on workplace changes

 Operational elements, including:

o Risk assessments
o Hierarchy of control
o Design review and management of change processes
 Training
 Communication
 Documentation
 Monitoring, Evaluating, and Correcting a Health and
Safety Management System
  Implementing a health and safety management system is a good start. But it’s just a start.
You’ll want to monitor it, evaluate its effectiveness, and make necessary corrections over
time as well.

Plan-Do-Check-Act
strong emphasis on continuous improvement

Monitoring, Measuring, and Assessing an OHSMS

Your company should monitor and measure hazards, risks, and controls at the workplace.

There are two primary purposes of monitoring and measuring. The first is to see if the OHSMS is
working as intended. The second is to make sure any safety and health problems are identified
and then fed back into the OHSMS planning process with the goal of eliminating and/or
controlling them.

Monitoring and measuring may include some or all the following, plus possibly others:

 Workplace inspections
 Workplace testing
 Exposure assessments
 Injury, illness, and incident tracking
 Safety suggestions from employees
 Occupational health assessments

Always perform these monitoring and measuring tasks in a manner that matches or exceeds
recognized industry standards or best practices, and always communicate findings to relevant
parties.

Exposure Assessments

These measure, calculate, or estimate a worker’s contact with or proximity to a specific hazard.
They may take note of things such as duration, frequency, intensity, or severity.

Examples include things like:

 Air monitoring
 Noise monitoring
 Measuring distance from dangerous heights
 Ergonomic risk exposures
 Radiation exposure
Injury, Illness, and Incident Tracking

Track these and compare them over time to consider their frequency and severity. Don’t rely on
these as your only measure, however. Because these numbers by definition are the errors the
OHSMS is trying to prevent, relying on just tracking injuries, illnesses, and incidents may tempt
companies to falsify or otherwise manipulate these figures to show improvement or hide
evidence of failure.

See our Incident Management System to help automate your incident tracking and investigations
and put it online (with mobile applications as well).

Employee Suggestions

There are a number of ways to get employee suggestions about safety. The key is to actively
keep lines of communication open, solicit employee opinions, and let employees know their
input is valued. It may be especially important to get employee input on tasks that are not
performed frequently, as the safety aspects of these may not be as familiar.

Occupational Health Assessments

These man include medical examinations, biological monitoring, reviews of health records, and
more.

Performing Incident Investigations

Establish a process so that all incidents, including major/severe incidents, minor incidents, and
near-misses will be reported. Then, be sure to investigate all incidents to determine a root cause
and control hazards or correct system problems that allowed the incident to occur–so it won’t
happen again.

Begin the incident investigation as soon as possible after the incident occurs. The incident
investigation process should:

 Define what is being investigated

 Establish timeframes for the incident investigation
 Define who should participate in the investigation
 Explain how recommendations from the investigation will be created, distributed, and communicated
to prevent similar incidents from occurring again.
For more information, please check out extended article on Performing an Incident Investigation.

In addition, the ANSI Z10 standard’s Appendix K includes a lot more helpful information on
incident investigations and includes an incident investigation template.

For even more helpful resources about incident investigations, check the following:

 What Is an Incident Investigation?

 Incident Investigations and Root-Cause Analyses
 Safety Differently, Incident Reporting, and Incident Investigations
 How to Prepare an Incident Investigation Kit

And check out our Incident Management System for help with all phases of the incident
investigation process–even OSHA/MSHA reporting.

Performing Corrective Actions

The OHSMS should identify any uncontrolled hazards and system deficiencies in order to
control and/or correct them and reduce risk to an acceptable level. The most severe hazards
should be corrected first and in an expedited manner. Others should be addressed after. The goal
is not necessarily to remove all hazards and/or risks, but to reduce risk to an acceptable level.

For more about these concepts of risk, safety, hazards, and acceptable levels of risk, read our
extensive article on Risk Management and Safety. You can also check Appendix F of the ANSI
Z10 OHSMS standard.

Remember to use the hierarchy of controls to control hazards and lower risks. For more on this,
read our extensive article on The Hierarchy of Controls. Appendix G of the ANSI Z10 standard
also has helpful information about the hierarchy of controls.

In cases when it will take an extended amount of time to fully implement the control for an
identified hazard to get risk down to acceptable levels, be sure to apply immediate short-
term/temporary corrective actions.
No single technique for hazard analysis and/or risk assessment will work for every company in
every situation. Instead, you’ll want to pick and choose from a variety of different methods to
find the one that best fits the need for the task, hazard, equipment, or process you must assess.

To help with performing hazard analyses and risk assessments, the ANSI Z10 standard includes
the following list of methods to consider using in its Appendix F:

 Brainstorming—a free-flowing conversation that includes employees that commonly perform the
task being analyzed; helps to identify hazards, risks, and appropriate controls
 Checklists—a checklist created by a supervisor to create a safety plan and periodically assess the
work site while work is being performed. Typically based on more complete risk assessments created
by experienced experts in the field. Z10 states that checklists are most effective if they (1) explain
“why?”; (2) explain “how?”; (3) encourage open communication and employee communication; and
(4) are part of a continuous improvement process to constantly make sure they cover all risks and
hazards.
 Consequence/probability matrix—This involves doing a task safety analysis and then creating a
table, with each hazard listed in a row and the columns used to identify the likelihood of injury, the
possible severity of the injury, and the resulting risk. A consequence/probability matrix is used for
assessing multiple hazards.
 Risk assessment matrix—The “classic” risk assessment technique used for assessing risk; involves
creating a table with likelihood or occurrence frequency making up the rows, severity and/or
consequence making the columns, and risk level making the “boxes” at the intersections of
likelihood/frequency and severity/consequences. See our Risk Management and Safety article for
more details on this.

5. Updating OHSMS Planning Process and Management Review

The Hierarchy of Controls

Another operational element of an OHSMS is the use of the hierarchy of controls.

When using the hierarchy of controls, you begin with an identified hazard. Here are some examples of types of
hazards in the workplace:

Type of Hazard Description Example

Safety Hazards Common hazards that cause
immediate injuries and illnesses,
and may lead to death
Biological Hazards Other life forms that can cause
injury or illnesses
Chemical and other Things that can cause harm to
Exposure Hazards you when you are exposed
Slip, trip, and fall hazards; working
from heights; electrical hazards;
moving machines; mobile equipment
Viruses, bacteria, mold, fungi, animal
bites/stings, toxic plants, blood and
other bodily fluids
Radiation, temperature (high or low),
noise, chemicals
 Ergonomic Hazards Strains and stresses on the body Poorly designed work areas, repeated
caused by workplace motions and motions, lifting heavy weights
body positions
Psychological or Hazards caused by interacting with Workplace violence, sexual
Societal Hazards people and social conditions at the harassment, stress, depression,
workplace alcohol and drug addiction

With a hazard now identified, you then try to find a way to “control” the hazard. To “control” the hazards
means to find a way to eliminate it or reduce it. And when you’re looking for ways to eliminate or reduce the
hazard, you look at specific types of controls in a specific order. That order is:

1. Elimination
2. Substitution
3. Engineering controls
4. Warnings
5. Administrative controls
6. Personal protective equipment (PPE)

Here’s a little closer look at that, with examples.

Hazard Control Description Example

Elimination Remove a hazard from the Changing a production process

workplace
Substitution Replace a hazard with something
less hazardous
Design a solution that controls the
Engineering Control(s) hazard at its source (requires a
physical change at the workplace)
Safe Work Develop specific rules and
Practice(s)/Warnings procedures for all workers to follow
when working in the presence of or
potentially exposed to a hazard
Administrative Developing other work practices to
Control(s) protect workers from hazards
Personal Protective Protective clothing or equipment
Equipment (PPE) that protects a worker from a
hazard
so your organization no longer uses
a substance known to cause cancer
Changing a formula so that instead
of working with a highly explosive
fluid, workers work with a fluid
that’s less explosive
Encasing a noisy machine inside a
sound-proof barrier
Placing warning labels on
hazardous chemicals
Limiting the amount of time
workers can work in a noisy area
Providing hearing protection to
people who work in a noisy area