Category: Resources & Tools
7 Steps to Creating Effective Checklists
In my last blog, I discussed the importance of checklists in saving lives.
Checklists are everywhere.
They are an integral part of many personal activities – from completing your tax return to communicating symptoms to your doctor. Checklists also play an important role in managing many business processes.
Checklists will be an important part of your OHSMS documentation.
In order to be effective, checklists need to be intelligently designed and routinely used. They also need to be controlled.
So how do you go about creating a great checklist?
Checklists Save Lives
Checklists are essential to successful business operations. Checklists are an integral part of an occupational health and safety management system. More importantly, checklists save lives.
This result is most obvious in medicine where the use of surgical checklists has saved thousands of lives and untold suffering. The importance of checklists in medicine was highlighted in a 2007 article in the New Yorker Magazine, The Checklist. The most dramatic of these incentives is the international adoption of a one-page Surgical Safety Checklist developed, promoted and disseminated by the World Health Organization.
Click here to download a copy of this checklist.
There are numerous uses of checklists in OH&S management systems. In fact, checklists are one of the most effective way of creating management system procedures and work instructions to meet the OHSAS 18001 requirements.
Some of the OH&S uses of checklists include –
- Inspection checklists – for forklift trucks, fire extinguishers and other safety-critical devices, equipment and supplies.
- Plans and permits – for confined space entry, hot work and equipment lockout where the sequence of tasks and adequacy of precautions are critical.
- Emergency preparedness – for making sure equipment, materials and personnel will be ready and available when an incident occurs.
- Risk assessments – for evaluating the hazards and risks associated with materials, equipment and tasks.
- Internal audit protocols – for making sure that OHSMS audits are complete, inclusive and cost-effective.
As regulations, activities and organizations become more complex, checklists become increasingly important for ensuring that nothing is missed. This is why pilot checklists were developed in aviation in the 1930s. This is why surgical checklists are being aggressively promoted in medicine today. This is why most OH&S management systems would benefit from the use of appropriately-designed checklists.
In my next blog, I will cover the 5 steps you should follow in order to develop good OHSMS checklists.
In the meantime, click here to request a copy of my EHSMS Implementation Checklist.
© ENLAR® Compliance Services, Inc. (2011)
What is PDCA?
If you are exploring the web looking for information about implementing management systems, pretty soon you will come across the acronym PDCA. You will quickly discover that PDCA stands for plan-do-check-act but it may not be clear to you what this actually means.
This page provides access to a FREE mini-course that provides clear and concise answers to the following questions -
- What is a Management System?
- What is PDCA and what does it mean?
- Why is PDCA important?
- How can I determine if an OHSMS standard is based on PDCA or not?
This course is about 15 minutes long. Since it is a flash presentation located on a separate web page, you may need modify your browser settings to allow pop-ups in order to access the course. Also, in order to hear the audio, you will need speakers on your computer. When you are ready to begin, just click on the link below.
Click here to open – Plan-Do-Check-Act – An Introduction to PDCA
Have comments or questions about this course?
You can type your questions or comments into the comment box below (you may need to click on the more button if you are on the home page) or send me an e-mail at ecsi2008@ENLAR.c0m.
Did you enjoy this course?
Check out my Introduction to OHSAS 18001 Course.
This course provides insight into interpreting the OHSAS 18001:2007 requirements as well as expert guidance in implementing an OHSMS for purposes of third-party certification.
© ENLAR® Compliance Services, Inc. (2011)
Irrational Decisions Impact OHSMS Implementation
Last May, I gave a presentation on auditing occupational health and safety management systems at the American Industrial Hygiene Conference (click here to access my blog post about that presentation). I was followed by a speaker who talked about behavioral considerations in implementing an OH&S management system. The focus of her presentation was on helping people make rational decisions about safety.
The problem is that individuals do NOT make rational decisions – particularly when it comes to safety and health.
- They refuse to wash their hands and come to work sick – even though these are the best strategies to prevent a potential epidemic.
- They talk and text on their cell phones while driving – even though it is as dangerous as drinking and driving.
- They wear their safety glasses on the top of their head rather than as protection for their eyes – as seen over and over again on HGTV shows. (I keep meaning to write a letter to HGTV pointing out the poor example they are setting for all of the DIYers in the audience.)
Why do people act irrationally?
My favorite book on this topic is Predictably Irrational (click on the link below to order from Amazon). In this book, Dan Ariely explores the reasons why individuals appear to act irrationally – this includes overvaluing our possessions, letting options distract us from our real objectives, and following established social norms in the workplace. As he puts it – “we consistently overpay, underestimate and procrastinate.”
Out with the Old – In with the New
The start of the New Year is good time to pause, reflect and clean out.
Many organizations use the start of the year as a time to review their OH&S management system objectives and set new ones. If their OH&S programs are lagging in their implementation, new approaches or new assignments are considered.
This is also a good time to address all that PAPER – either physical paper or electronic paper. This includes all those completed hazard evaluation forms, inspection checklists, excel spreadsheets, meeting notices and minutes, e-mails with various interested parties, incident investigations, corrective action reports,….
When I help develop record control processes and procedures for an organization, one of the concepts I try to incorporate is the inclusion of record schedules with record breaks and scheduled clean-out days.
Ban the Blame
One of the key requirements of the OHSAS 18001 standard is establishing a procedure for taking corrective and preventive action (section 4.5.3.2). Both corrective and preventive action need to include identifying the underlying causes – often called root causes – of whatever it is that is or went wrong.
This is not easy. Often, the root cause investigation ends with a determination along the lines of “Joe screwed up.” We play the blame game.
Why?
Should I Write a Procedure?
One of the difficult questions that OH&S managers face is – “Do we need a written procedure for [some process]?” The dilemma is that although written procedures are a necessary part of an occupational safety and health management system – if you create too many formal procedures your OHSMS becomes complex, cumbersome and unwieldy.
I just got done reading an article in the October 2009 Quality Progress Magazine that sets out a nifty tool for making this decision – a 2 x 2 matrix for deciding whether or not to standardize a process. Although the example given in this article – Building a Consensus – is for a quality system process, it can be easily adapted to making standardization decisions in an OH&S management system.
Try it out for your OH&S management system and let me know – “Did it work?” - by posting your comments below.
© ENLAR® Compliance Services, Inc. (2009)
What are you going to STOP doing?
Many OHS management systems and programs have a major problem – they are bloated with paperwork, inefficient in their operation and filled with busywork. These programs are often focused on the achievement of arbitrary metrics rather than improved OH&S performance. As a result, the managers of these programs are often fed-up, burned out and overwhelmed. They are also increasingly being told – “Given the current economy, you need to do more with less.”
That is the wrong message and the wrong goal.
To quote Peter Drucker – “There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently what should not be done at all.”
The goal should not be to do more with less – it should be to do less.
