Braden Lister and Deborah Bridge from the Government Health and Safety Lead (GHSL) joined us recently to discuss their role as the functional health and safety lead for agencies.
There is a strong push for government to be leaders in health and safety practice and fill four key roles as employer, purchaser, regulator and to set policy and law. The GHSL was set up to support agencies to understand and manage workplace health and safety risk, engage workers and innovate.
“Supporting agencies to look inwards to improve their health and safety performance.”Braden Lister Principal Advisor, Government Health and Safety Lead
Anything that will cause a significant injury, illness or fatality with a credible potential can be a critical risk.
A study by the Campbell Institute in the United States looked at the injury triangle, a concept designed to show the connection between near misses through to fatal injuries – “For every one fatality, you will have 30 significant injuries that are life changing… to 30,000 near miss events...”
The Institute found that with safety maturity and proper regulations, an organisation reduces their total health and safety incidents, but the number of significant injuries/fatalities remains steady. They discovered that 20% of reported incidents occurred under different circumstances, separate to the other 80% health and safety incidents. It’s the 20% that senior leadership should primarily focus on, but this requires a different prevention strategy.
“Essentially the end point of a critical risk programme within an agency is to give your senior leadership team a focus on the things that they should be thinking about.”Braden Lister Principal Advisor, Government Health and Safety Lead
GHSL have designed a road map to help agencies define, manage and monitor their critical risks.
Critical Risk Maturity Improvement Roadmap – Government Health & Safety Lead
GHSL also host several forums to promote cross-sector engagement, provide development and training opportunities and have several resources for health and safety managers and representatives.