Health and safety consulting is one of Nuffield Group’s core services, so it’s central internally too. So far – based on the engagement of our team in health and safety and 16 years with a TRIFR of 0.0 – we think we’ve done a pretty good job.
However, thinking you’re doing a good job isn’t the advice we’d give our customers, so last year we challenged ourselves with a simple, blunt question: are we really as good as we think we are?
We used Nu-Safe® to help answer the question. Nu-Safe® was created to help our customers track their key process safety controls, and to see clearly and quickly which areas require immediate attention. When we applied Nu-Safe® internally, it enabled us to build, from the ground up, a true picture of compliance with our safety management system, using our risk register to guide which control measures to focus on first. Unsurprisingly, we found areas in need of improvement which were promptly addressed.
For the next four months, we added to Nu-Safe® until we had a complete picture. The process revealed some shortcomings in our systems, but our layers of protection approach had done its job.
I’ve just completed the monthly verification review, which is part of the Nu-Safe® process. The app on my phone is showing a green traffic light for health and safety and a score of 97%. This tells me that we are doing 97% of the activities we should be doing to keep our people healthy and safe. I am also able to view the action plan for how we will deal with the final 3%.
Two screenshots are shown above. The insert shows the summary, with two high priority actions and one low priority action. The main picture is our month by month trend.
Nu-Safe® has become so powerful at focusing Nuffield Group on what matters most that we’ve rolled it out to other areas of the business, including Culture, Finance, Project Delivery, and Sales. The tool’s ability to simplify complex processes has already impacted positively across the board.
By having the Nu-Safe® app on our phones, the team has all the time access to our critical measures, including the action plans to fix issues. We don’t have to wait for monthly reports or deal with internal filtering of information; we’re kept current, so we can provide the necessary support to those team members who need it.
So, are we as good as we think we are? No, not yet, but we’re well on the way. As Peter Drucker said, “you can’t manage what you don’t measure”.
