Business Consort

There are four steps to wisdom:

1. Acquiring data
2. Turning the data into information
3. Using the information to gain knowledge
4. Applying wisdom to the use of that knowledge.

The current health and safety legislation and guidance has an abundance of data - and some of it is presented as information, however, it’s confusing. There’s so much duplication as each new law repeats what’s gone before - with a few extra twists. It’s no wonder that organisations are confused, let alone the individual members of staff who have to apply them on a day-to-day basis.

Most employees only understand risk on a surface level - they’re told ‘do this’ and they do it (or, in some cases, don’t do it). Most of them don’t really think about it much, other than as a bit of a nuisance.

People are swamped with information, policy documents, safety regulations, warnings, manuals - who has the time to read it, let alone try to understand it or apply it intelligently?

When people are taught dynamic risk assessment all that changes. In order to assess a rapidly changing set of circumstances, they have to think! They have to understand what is happening and then make good quality decisions - in other words they are forced to apply wisdom before taking action.

If the skills of dynamic risk assessment were taught throughout your organisation from the top down, how much better would your operation function and how much more effective would you be?

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If you choose to have your selection gift-wrapped, you will be given the choice of luxury gift wrap in 5 different colours, or glitter gift box in silver or gold. With either of these selections, you will have the option to enter a personalised message onto the gift tag, which will be handwritten. Simple, stylish.
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At Something Divine, our luxury gifts are individually hand-selected from carefully chosen prestigious suppliers, combining luxury with style and quality. By selecting luxury gifts that are not easily available on the high street, you can shop with the confidence that your gift selection will be as individual and special as the person you are buying for.

When things go wrong but, it doesn’t actually result in an accident where someone gets injured, everyone heaves a sigh of relief and you hear phrases like ‘it was a near miss’ and ‘there was an incident’. Consider that a near miss is also a near hit – and an incident that is out of the ordinary and unplanned needs looking into – or it will almost certainly happen again – perhaps with a less fortunate outcome. So why are ‘incidents’ and ‘near misses’ often not investigated?

An accident is not simply a description of a situation where someone gets hurt. An effective organisation uses the tools of accident investigation as a business improvement tool.
1. To explore any unplanned occurrence – and find out why it happened and what could be done to prevent it happening again.
2. To investigate conditions that staff experience – such as back pain – to find out what activities are causing this or exacerbating it.
3. To discover the causes of industrial diseases – where people suffer from certain ailments that may be related to their working environment.
4. To reveal the root cause of injuries; for example, if someone injures their hand in machinery, the investigation may discover that they were not wearing their safety gloves – but, that wasn’t the cause of the accident. The root cause has everything to do with the process or the way in which the machinery is being used – everyone doesn’t get their hands trapped, even with gloves on, so something needs to change – maybe additional training in machine usage for the injured operator or the addition of safety guards on the machine.

Seeing incidents that don’t cause injury as ‘a lucky break’ is simply short-sightedness – and missing an opportunity to make your organisation more efficient, more effective and more profitable.

This is an unashamedly ‘grumpy old man’ item - but it needs to be aired.

Local councils seem to have their focus on unnecessary cotton wool, instead of practical action. There was a news item last summer was about the need for hanging baskets to be far enough above head height to ensure people don’t bang their heads on them.

I don’t know how much consideration they’ve given to the fact that most people have eyes at head height and tend to avoid anything coming at them around that level! We manage to avoid lamposts, pavement cafe tables, greengrocers displays, and men at work barriers blocking the pavement - ah, yes; and that’s another issue.

It’s common knowledge that severe weather damages road surfaces. It’s also common knowledge that, in the UK, there’s a reasonably good chance we’ll get snow and ice at some point (or several points) during the winter. So why is it that the local councils don’t plan ahead to ensure that, as soon as possible there are teams out filling in the ruts and potholes that have appeared and making the roads safe for us again?

It’s bad enough when you’re driving a car to hit a pothole; it rattles your teeth and can ruin your suspension (even if the garage repair people are rubbing their hands in glee). But what happens if you’re on a bicycle or motorbike? A pothole can cause a real accident, with injuries. What happens if you’re driving an open vehicle and the jolt dislodges something - and sends it flying into the path of another vehicle, or to hit a pedestrian?
Of course, things should be secured, but that doesn’t mean they can’t work loose with enough jolting and lurching.

When will the councils understand that planned preventative maintenance (PPN) - and contingency planning - would be far more useful than getting excited about flower pots that most of us can easily avoid?