Strategic Aims and Objectives
This document outlines the Council's aims for health and safety over the 2023/26 period and how the Council will accomplish these.
The Council's overarching aim is to provide a safe and healthy workplace for employees and individuals engaging with Council services. Additionally, implementing this strategy will assist the Council in developing a positive safety culture. This strategy aligns with our corporate values:
- Responsive – we will engage with our employees to address their health and safety concerns and involve them in decision making to manage health and safety risks.
- Innovative – we will adopt new technology and ways of working to improve the health and safety of our employees.
- Trusted – we will be open and honest about how we manage health and safety risks with our employees and those affected by our work.
- Ambitious – we will continually improve our health and safety performance and seek ways to improve service delivery safely.
The Council's strategic aims are to:
- Improve the reporting and investigation of workplace incidents
- Improve health & safety management arrangements
- Improve health & safety governance arrangements across the Council
In order to achieve its strategic aims the Council will pursue the following objectives:
Improve the reporting and investigation of workplace incidents
- Deliver a programme of learning events for managers and employees regarding the use of the online reporting system.
- Undertake qualitative analysis of workplace incidents to identify areas of improvement for Services regarding incident management.
- Review Key Performance Indicators across the Council regarding workplace incidents.
Improve health & safety management arrangements
- Transition the Council to a safety management system aligned with the requirements of ISO 45001.
- Develop a safety management system audit schedule for all Council Services.
- Provide an online platform for Services to manage their health & safety risks.
Improve health & safety governance arrangements across the Council
Review the role and function of the Council’s Safety Management Group
Review the governance arrangements across Falkirk Council to ensure that Services are best positioned to manage their health & safety risks.
Review training requirements for managers in order to improve decision making regarding safety risks.
Improve the reporting and investigation of workplace incidents
Effective incident management plays a critical role in reducing harm to employees, service users and members of the public. In addition, it helps to mitigate losses associated with workplace incidents such as lost productivity, financial loss due to civil claims and increased sick pay and can minimise or prevent reputational damage to the Council stemming from direct engagement with the Health & Safety Executive.
Deliver a programme of learning events for managers and employees regarding the use of the online reporting system
Increasing knowledge amongst the workforce regarding use of the online Incident Reporting module is critical to help ensuring incidents are reported accurately and in a timely fashion. Additionally, this helps improve confidence of all employees that the reporting system works in a beneficial manner for all users.
In addition to the current online resources available for employees in using the reporting system, a supplementary learning programme will be delivered by the Health, Safety & Wellbeing team.
This programme will be focussed on achieving the following outcomes:
- Improve the understanding on what does and does not need to be reported within the online reporting system.
- Improve the quality of manager investigations by providing increased knowledge of root cause analysis and applying it to workplace incidents.
- Identify and remedy local issues with access to the reporting system for incident reporting and officer with systems access.
Undertake qualitative analysis of workplace incidents to identify areas of improvement for Services regarding incident management
Providing Services with better business intelligence on the Council’s incident reporting process will enable them to undertake better internal scrutiny of reporting practices. Additionally, it will assist in highlighting areas where further support is needed to ensure reporting processes across the Council are accurate.
This will assist the Council in undertaking more informed improvement work related to incident reporting and also improve practices locally. This in turn will help provide a safer work environment and improve safety culture, as well as, mitigate against financial and productivity losses associated with workplace incidents.
This analysis will provide services with a regular update that:
- Assesses a random sample of incidents within the Service.
- Identifies non-conformances with the management of incident reporting within local work area incident reporting and investigation.
- Develops tailored responses to themes developing within management investigations.
Review Key Performance Indicators across the Council regarding workplace incidents
All Services benefit from being better informed about the safety management performance. Providing Services with regular information regarding agreed performance indicators allows for improved decision making and a greater ability to reduce costs associated with workplace incidents.
By reviewing Key Performance Indicators across the Council we can ensure that:
- All Services will receive a standard KPI report with agreed indicators across the Council.
- Additional KPIs which benefit the Service will be added to individual reports which allow for improved decision making at SMT level.
- Better visibility and ability to address emerging risks.
Improve health & safety management arrangements
Improving health & safety management arrangements will provide Services with the tools they need to have a higher level of accountability and achieve better health & safety performance. This will modernise our health and safety arrangement and support Services to meet their statutory responsibilities, manage safety risks associated with their work, and help ensure continual improvement. Achieving this goal will ensure consistency across Council services, reduce potential liability and allow services to better demonstrate their health and safety arrangements when tendering for external work.
Transition the Council to a safety management system aligned with the requirements of ISO 45001
Updating the Council's safety management arrangement to conform to ISO 45001 will improve these arrangements and provide assurance that the Council is seeking continual improvement in safety performance. Additionally, may provide commercial opportunities for the Health, Safety & Wellbeing team to generate income in the future.
This transition will:
- Provide a robust framework for safety management within the Council.
- Enable areas of the Council to achieve ISO 45001 certification in order to assist with bidding for external work.
- Provide the Health, Safety & Wellbeing team with valuable experience working with the ISO standard which can translate to revenue raising opportunities in the future.
Develop a safety management system audit schedule for all Council Services
Critical to the success of any organisation’s safety performance is understanding where it can improve. Implementing a comprehensive audit programme of Service safety arrangements will provide Directors with a greater level of understanding of areas of safety management they need to focus on and recognise areas within their Service that are achieving a high level of performance. Separate to the Premises Manager Handbook audits, this programme will focus on management arrangements for health & safety and assist Service Managers is improving their health and safety standards.
This audit programme will:
- Provide support to higher risk Council areas.
- Allow for better monitoring of areas of concern regarding safety management.
- Highlight areas of good practice and allow for learning across Council Services.
Provide an online platform for Services to manage their health & safety risks
Continuing to provide an online platform for health & safety will help the Council meet its aims of being a digital Council. Additionally, this will provide the Council with a simpler, more robust way of managing its health & safety risk assessments, incidents and audit.
Continuing to maintain an online platform will:
- Provide employees with a simple, accessible way to report workplace incidents.
- Monitor the progression of actions identified as part of workplace audits and incident investigations.
- Collect information which allows for up to date reporting on KPIs and areas of interest for senior management.
Improve health & safety governance arrangements across the Council
Improving governance arrangements for health and safety across the Council will help in providing better assurance to senior leadership within the Council regarding the management of safety risks. This will also assist in providing clear lines of responsibility and accountability regarding the management of workplace risks.
Review the role and function of the Council’s Safety Management Group
The Council's Safety Management Group operates within the Council’s existing risk management framework and sits beneath the Corporate Risk Management Group. Ensuring this group meets the emerging needs of the Council in relation to safety management is critical to delivering an innovative approach across the Council.
Reviewing the function of this group will assist in:
- Ensuring this strategy is monitored appropriately.
- Clarify and improve the relationships between the Safety Management Group & Services.
- Enable the group to act as a steering group for the implementation of the Council's online Health & Safety platform.
Review the governance arrangements across Falkirk Council to ensure that Services are best positioned to manage their health & safety risks
Improving governance arrangements within Services for Health & Safety will assist Directors in ensuring that the risks associated with their areas work is managed appropriately.
This review will help Services:
- Create clearer lines of accountability from Director to frontline employee level regarding health & safety responsibilities.
- Improve management of local health & safety issues ensuring the action management capability of the health and safety online system is included with Service performance monitoring. Using the information held in the online system to identify and monitor actions and Service performance.
- Establish a more open and honest safety management structure for managers and employees.
Review training requirements for managers in order to improve decision making regarding safety risks
More knowledgeable managers are able to better identify and manage safety risks within their work areas and address concerns raised by employees and Trade Unions.
This will improve safety management within the Council by:
- Creating a minimum standard of competency for managers regarding health & safety.
- Help improve local decision making on health & safety issues.
- Assist managers to better implement audit recommendations.