This month we’re picking up the discussion from last month’s Insight, in which QRMC suggested that Management Systems are often ‘obese’: fattened by verbose language, cut’n’pastes from legislation or codes of practices, and layers of documents that appear to be oblivious to the fact that the end-user worker does not have the time to read what is being offered.

From the experience of auditing over 100 organisations’ management systems over the years, QRMC’s auditors have identified a range of commonly experienced problems that stand-out as ‘fattening agents’ within a management system:

  • Document Architecture – prescribing a document hierarchy whereby ‘there shalt be’ a Policy for a specific issue, a corresponding Standard, and a Protocol before getting to a Procedural document that prescribes what’s actually needed by the system’s users, that is, how the specific issue is to be managed.
  • Document format/layout – adopting a template that requires time to be spent detailing the Background, the Aim, the Purpose, Scope, Rationale, Definitions, Responsibilities and Accountabilities for everyone involved in the process, and further in the Review Process, Training Requirements, Audit Evidence and a page of Legislative References, with the actual requirements of the process lost in the mass of words.
  • The cut’n’paste approach – the tendency to ‘cut and paste’ reams of detail from the Codes of Practice or legislation without interpreting what it means for your operations.
  • The choice of language – all too often there is a disconnect between the document author and the end-user, with the author using language that doesn’t resonate with the end-user. Australian and international studies have shown that most safety communications aim too high for the average worker’s English literacy level. The studies showed that common safety procedure terms like ‘minimise’, ‘prohibit’ and ‘compliance’ were identified as posing a challenge for over two thirds of employees, impacting on their ability to understand the safety message.

In all decisions around creating and reviewing a management system, the custodians, authors and auditors need to consider how the documentation will fit with the workforce, how easy it is to read and understand and how easy it will be to comply with.

Interestingly, Qantas recently used the introduction of ISO 45001 as an opportunity to overhaul their many Safety Management Systems and processes across the organisation.  As a large national and international airline, Qantas must ensure its Management System complies with every Australian Commonwealth and State jurisdiction’s requirement, the various international requirements as well as a series of interfacing CASA requirements. A major overhaul of the Workplace Health and Safety (WHS) Management System was undertaken last year resulting in a more streamlined approach that now applies across Qantas’s various business operations. It was established (for the most part) that the separate Business Operational Teams did not need their own WHS documents, and as a result, an overarching uniform framework was able to be established that eliminated much of the duplication across the organisation.

Altogether the number of documents within the updated WHS Management System has been reduced by 30% (with further reductions potentially to come). Additionally, the process has tightened up the link between the WHS responsibilities of individuals and the Management System documentation, with the aim of making the system easier to comply with for end-users.

With the end-user in mind, document titles have been simplified with a move away from safety jargon (and a corresponding broadening of the search parameters within the online document management system), and there has actually been an increase in the related Document Templates, introduced with the aim of making life a little easier for users across the respective business operations.

Well done to the Qantas Team for the smart thinking that went into re-designing their Management System, and for applying ISO 45001, while keeping the end-user in mind.

Please contact QRMC for more information.