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 Health, Safety & Environment

The health and safety of a company's key assets, personnel, is paramount for sustained growth. Occupational Health and Safety may also protect co-workers, family members, employers, customers, suppliers, nearby communities, and other members of the public who are impacted by the workplace environment.

In the workplace, it is essentially the adaptation of work to man, and of each man to his job so as to ensure a satisfied and productive workforce. When companies do not manage these types of risks appropriately there are moral, economic, and legal implications, and it is no surprise that this can and does affect the bottom line of a company or an initiative. This could be through lower productivity, high turnover of staff, high payouts (e.g. insurance or legal), or through damaged reputation.

Here are some of the benefits that an Enterprise Risk Management system can deliver to the Health, Safety & Environmental Risk Department:

• Bringing together H,S & E risks alongside other business risks gives a holistic view of the risk horizon, so that decisions can be made in the context of the overall objectives and requirements of the business.
• Linking accidents and near misses to H,S,&E Risks in ARM allows the events that happen to inform the assessments of future risk and future mitigation strategies, such as insurance and workplace training.
• Linking together project H,S & E risk, Operational H&S risk, Asset H&S risk and strategic H&S risk within ARM enables a business-wide view of the safety threats that could derail your strategy, and enable common, cohesive, and cost effective mitigation strategies to be put in place, to help minimize the "Total Cost of Risk Mitigation".
• ARM  can be a "single source of truth" within organizations for safety and risk information. From strategic safety risk initiatives to statements from witnesses of accidents, it is only with truly integrated safety risk management that your business can make the right decisions, which will in turn have positive impacts on the bottom line.
• ARM’s analysis can be the key tool to demonstrate and provide assurance that every business decision has considered safety implications as well as help in resource allocation to improve the capital efficiency of the program or enterprise.
• Storing key risks against safety legislation and regulations with mitigating actions provides regulators with evidence that safety is taken seriously.

Modern occupational safety and health legislation usually demands that a risk assessment be carried out prior to making an intervention. This assessment should:

• Identify the hazards
• Identify all affected by the hazard and how
• Evaluate the risk
• Identify and prioritize the required actions

The calculation of risk is based on the likelihood or probability of the harm being realized and the severity of the consequences. This can be expressed mathematically as a quantitative assessment (by assigning low, medium and high likelihood and severity with integers and multiplying them to give a risk factor), or as a description of the circumstances by which the harm could arise i.e. qualitative.

The assessment should be recorded and reviewed periodically and whenever there is a significant change to work practices. The assessment should include practical recommendations to control the risk. Once recommended controls are implemented, the risk should be re-calculated to determine whether or not it has been lowered to an acceptable level. Generally speaking, newly introduced controls should lower risk by one level, i.e. from high to medium or from medium to low.