Managing health and safety risks: Implications for tailoring health and safety management system practices

Abstract

As national and international health and safety management system (HSMS) standards are voluntarily accepted or regulated into practice, organizations are making an effort to modify and integrate strategic elements of a connected management system into their daily risk management practices. In high-risk industries such as mining, that effort takes on added importance. The mining industry has long recognized the importance of a more integrated approach to recognizing and responding to site-specific risks, encouraging the adoption of a risk-based management framework. Recently, the U.S. National Mining Association led the development of an industry-specific HSMS built on the strategic frameworks of ANSI: Z10, OHSAS 18001, The American Chemistry Council’s Responsible Care, and ILO-OSH 2001. All of these standards provide strategic guidance and focus on how to incorporate a plan-do-check-act cycle into the identification, management and evaluation of worksite risks. This paper details an exploratory study into whether practices associated with executing a risk-based management framework are visible through the actions of an organization’s site-level management of health and safety risks. The results of this study show ways that site-level leaders manage day-to-day risk at their operations that can be characterized according to practices associated with a risk-based management framework. Having tangible operational examples of day-to-day risk management can serve as a starting point for evaluating field-level risk assessment efforts and their alignment to overall company efforts at effective risk mitigation through a HSMS or other processes.

Exploring the use of situation awareness in behaviors and practices of health and safety leaders

“…While also not within the scope of this exploratory study, future research could seek to identify situation awareness skill building practices and assessment and their relationship to worker empowerment efforts as part of building a safety culture. Situation awareness skill building and assessment may fit into the “check” aspect of measuring the effectiveness of risk management practices, which has been identified as a gap in previous studies (Willmer and Haas, 2016). Finally, in hazardous industries such as mining, situation awareness skills could also be assessed in relation to stop work authority practices as implemented in a systematic management of health and safety through a formalized risk management approach like an HSMS.…”

Imminent danger: Characterizing uncertainty in critically hazardous mining situations

“…One possible reason is that mineworkers report becoming complacent while performing routine tasks, such as maintenance and repair (Eiter, Kosmoski and Connor, 2016). To improve knowledge and awareness of procedural controls, one manager in Willmer and Haas’s (2016) study suggested addressing instances with work crews as he observed them, such as communicating the protective value of safety vests when he observed a mineworker not wearing one.…”

“…As a result, the mineworker may not be aware of some hazards and, therefore, not use the necessary procedural controls. Willmer and Haas (2016) suggested formalizing risk management practices as a way to improve situational awareness and communication so that mineworkers increase their level of awareness of hazards.…”