Actions speak louder!

When designing systems we focus on the why and the how. Ideally we connect the user to the process elegantly but still find some room to expand on the brief with our own innovations.

People in the HSEQ/OH&S/WH&S spheres of influence ultimately respond to legislation that we would describe as a “concrete implementation”. Basically the rules that are reflected in law are applied into system design.

Broadly speaking systems have two functions in this space. Firstly they catalogue the aims and intentions of the organisation to meet it’s responsibilities and secondly they record the efforts made in pursuing that agenda.

To accommodate its responsibilities an organisation will map out a list of actions that it undertakes. You can have the best policies in the world but unless you act on them then you are un-compliant with the legislation and pretty much a sitting duck when things go wrong. That’s not a question of “if” but one of “when”.

Every day that you leave the door open to risk the penalties compound. Would you rather have a well managed uneventful business or one where you are putting out fires as they arise? The legislation is pretty clear on this.

Lights! Camera! Action!

A big part of our design philosophy is making the user aware of what they have to address without adding to the confusion. Most businesses have different staff that contribute to different parts of the safety process. In our system these are saved as actions.

Actions have three types of user assigned to them:

• Assigned To: This is the person who is doing the action
• Reviewer: This is the person who signs off that the action has been completed
• Stakeholders: These are the people that get alerted of an activity in regards to the action

From the ground up we have implemented a system of checks and balances that ensure the key people are across the activity required to meet their legislative requirements. To put it another way it is your job to know and we make sure you do!

Action Tree Report

Early in the piece we built out a nested collection of actions. This has the advantage of splitting up component and dependent tasks to achieve a wider objective. Each staff member takes ownership of their part of the process. Their contributions are recorded and communicated with the other team members in a transparent and coordinated fashion.

There is no “a dog ate my homework” responses because all actions are recorded in a transparent and accessible fashion. An added benefit is that parent actions cannot be closed out unless their child actions are undertaken. This enforces that all steps of your compliance road map are undertaken, recorded and successful.