Tips for Writing Effective Safety Procedures

Safety procedures are an essential section of a safety management system and form a bridge between your general statements made in safety policies and the duty specific instructions contained in specific things like JSAs. The longer and much more complicated they are the less likely they will be read and, therefore, the less likely they will be applied which defeats the reason really.

Someone once said that explanations ought to be as brief as you possibly can and no briefer and this certainly applies to safety procedures.Here are a few ideas for keeping them brief and clear to see.

Keeping Safety Procedures Focused

When writing safety procedures it really is sometimes easy to drift into areas in a roundabout way related to the topic of the procedure. A proven way of avoiding these distractions is to draw a flow chart. What's the start point, what's the end point and just how do people get from one to the other? Creating a flowchart helps you focus on the important things people must to accomplish to meet the purpose of the safety procedure. It also helps make sure no steps are missed.

Template

Browse around this site  makes writing safety procedures easier in addition, it allows users to understand their structured and how to find the information they want. No one really wants to need to scroll through pages of irrelevant information to find the bit they want.

If your organization already includes a document control system then it is highly likely that a template already exists for business procedures. Using this template aligns the safety procedures with other business procedures with which your readers already are familiar. This makes them more likely to be accepted and used.

Keep it Real

George Orwell (he wrote 1984, Animal Farm and "Big Brother" was his idea) wrote:

The fantastic enemy of clear language is insincerity. If you find a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns, as it were, instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, just like a cuttlefish squirting out ink.

Often safety procedures appear to be more of a wish list of things the safety group would like to happen rather than reflecting what's achievable and I am guilty of the myself. Sometimes management want certain requirements written into safety procedures despite the fact that implementation in the field is unlikely. Regardless of the reason, the writer is probably aware of what's happening and over-justifies certain requirements making the safety procedure more challenging and complex to comprehend.

To greatly help avoid this, have some field staff that you trust or whose opinion you value review your safety procedure before distributing it for formal consultation. Discuss it with them explaining what you're trying to do and amend it to reflect the comment you receive. The support of the field staff, who actually have to implement the safety procedure, should help you convince management among others of the approach you've taken.

Language

It really is all too easy to slip into "safety speak" or use "fancy" long words when writing safety procedures. It may shortcut the procedure but that doesn't help the people likely to read and follow the task understand what you're discussing. So keep it simple, explain any jargon terms you might use and steer clear of those long words that no-one can pronounce aside from understand.

Length

Long safety procedures are often filled up with "waffle" or complicated by attempting to address too much.

Safety procedures are action documents. They ought to concentrate on providing clear direction what ought to be done, by whom, when and how. They direct employees on what the business enterprise expects them to behave when met with a particular hazard. There is no place for the type of generalised comments found in safety policies and restating policy statements in procedures adds nothing of value.

In some cases a single safety procedure can contain everything in regards to a particular hazard but still be reasonably short and and simple. However, some hazards are more complicated and so are better dealt with in a number of separate but related safety procedures. For example, instead of have one long procedure coping with contractor management, it might be better to have a number of smaller ones dealing with the various aspects such as specification development, tender evaluation, induction and so forth.

Legislation and External Standards

Compliance with a safety procedure should automatically produce compliance with legal requirements and any external standard that the business needs to adhere to. There is no need to reference the legislation or standard or, a whole lot worse, cite it word after word for a few reasons:

In general I've found that people turn off when you start talking about these things;
It creates the feeling that the business cares more about complying with legal and external requirements than they do about the safety of these workforce;
There's often no easy method of accessing these documents;
These requirements tend to be general and their application needs them to be interpreted. Different people could have differing interpretations. This can result in debates about which interpretation is correct rather than the best approach of dealing with a hazard. It's the businesses responsibility, in consultation with the workforce, to decide how legislation and external standards will undoubtedly be applied of their operations.

My view is that people in the field have enough to do without having to be expected to know or interpret legislation. That's why businesses employ safety specialists.

Forms and Guidance Materials

Often, wordy details of what people are expected to do could be summarised into a form. The wording in the safety procedure then becomes a straightforward "Complete form ABC". The proper execution can contain information on how to complete it if necessary.

Guidelines could be appended to the safety procedure providing additional but non-essential information on what people are said to be doing. Such things as legal summaries, extracts from standards and so forth can be included as a guideline that those interested can refer to.

Other Procedures

If your organization already has other management systems in place you will find a good chance that some of the procedures needed for your safety management system have been created. They could need some changes to accommodate the safety requirements but these may only be minor. This prevents duplication and is one step towards integrating safety into general business practices. Areas where this maybe possible include:

Administrative functions such as for example document control;
Risk management practices;
Incident reporting and investigation;
Hazard management such as chemicals (if there's an environmental management system set up).

Even though full integration isn't possible, cross referencing to other, non-safety related procedures can help reduce the size of one's safety procedures.

Wrapping it Up

Safety procedures are the backbone of a safety management system and the success of the system is largely dependent on how well the safety procedures are followed by the workforce. They must be written in a manner that makes it easy for the workforce to understand and follow. They have to give clear direction and, at the same time, be flexible enough to be utilized in a variety of situations. That's what makes them a challenge to create. Hopefully the tips in this post will help you to successfully meet this challenge.