The collection, organisation and upkeep of the policies, procedures, requirements, expectations, processes, records and tools we use for managing health and safety in our work environment.

1. www.advisian.com
Good HSE
Governance
Mark Cowan, Advisian
September 2016

2. What is good governance?
The collection, organisation and upkeep
of the policies, procedures, requirements,
expectations, processes, records and
tools we use for managing health and
safety in our work environment.
Creating safety.
Not reacting to harm.

3. What does governance look like?
Board of
Directors
Company
Management
Set expectations
Charter and policy
Strategy and objectives
Deliver Requirements
Set targets
Incorporate into management practices
Determine resources required
Inform
Performance metrics
Health and safety report
Worker participation
Understand Performance
Know what to ask
Assurance plan
Recognise what good looks like
Industry Good
Practice
Internal health and safety advice
Independent Expert Health and safety advice

4. Health and safety management systems
can help provide good governance
Primary motive
Managing workplace
risks to avoid injury
or illness
Aid industrial
relations
Minimise incident
costs
Comply with
legislation

5. Typical components of
a Health and Safety
Management System
Leadership
Risk
Management
Change
Management
Training
Incident and
emergencies
Contractor
Management
Assurance
Communication

6. Tracking performance by accident statistics
does not equate managing safety.
Accident statistics are lagging indicators –
they are too late to prevent the accident,
but we can see what happened with
hindsight.

7. Q. How do we turn hindsight into
foresight, and prevent accidents
from happening in the first place?

8. A. Leading indicators

9. Leading Indicators
Leading indicators provide us with
information to tell us we are doing
the right things to create a safe
environment.
Skill &
knowledge
Clear
processes
Good
tools
Safety outcome

10. Reporting and assurance
01
Assurance
can be improved by prioritised actions
agreed by leadership on the basis of the
reporting received.
02
Reporting
can be updated over time based
on performance concerns raised
by assurance activities.
Assurance
Checking that what we do is right
Reporting
Informing leadership of performance

11. Assurance
There are a range of activities that need to be reviewed to determine what we do, and
identify good practices to share and embed, as well as areas of concern to rectify.
To be effective, organisational assurance should be driven at a range of levels to reflect the
business hierarchy and structure.
Levels
1. External / independent
2. Systems level
3. Departmental level
4. Work activity level
5. Contractor / interface level
ActivitiesAssurance
1. Audits
2. Reviews
3. Site inspections
4. Leadership visits
5. Performance against plan

12. Reporting should be:
A combination of leading and lagging indicators.
Consistent information from all parts of the
organisation.
Genuinely useful information that decisions can be
based on.
Easily understood and interpreted.

13. Lagging and leading indicators
They should be specific to objectives and take into account
the health and safety risk profile.
1. Number of injuries or illnesses
2. Absence rates due to sickness
3. Number of exposure incidents
4. Notifiable incidents or events
5. Contractor injuries, illnesses or events
1. Number of audits or inspections completed
2. Timeframe to close corrective actions
3. Training completed
4. Number of near miss incidents reported
5. Preventative maintenance completed
6. H&S Committee meetings
7. Safety conversations completed
Lagging indicator examples Leading indicator examples

14. Reporting pitfalls
Acting on headline data only – this
should be a starting point for enquiry,
not a cue for a knee jerk reaction
A single incident should not drive the
organisation's full focus – it should be a
range of organisation ‘symptoms’

15. How to report properly?
1. Review organisational objectives for
health and safety
2. Develop appropriate indicator set:
a) Risk areas
b) Work scopes
c) Practicality
3. Develop reporting format and approach
4. Monitor results

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